We fell in love with HGTV’s Dave and Jenny Marrs on their hit show Fixer to Fabulous, and now we can’t get enough of them on Home Town Takeover.
The beloved husband-and-wife duo have built a name renovating over 300 homes in Northwest Arkansas. Not to mention their most recent overhaul—turning an 1870’s historic home into a coveted retreat, which you can book on Airbnb now!
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Through their construction company Marrs Developing, the couple has been renovating homes since 2004. Dave’s knowledge of building and restoring historic homes as a contractor, builder, and expert craftsman, paired with Jenny’s eye for design, has been invaluable to the growth of their community, as well as their TV careers.
But Jenny and Dave are much more than HGTV’s Fixer to Fabulous power couple. When they aren’t at work on one of their shows—or tending to their berry farm—you can find them enjoying family time with their five young children at their farmhouse in Bentonville, Arkansas.
If you aren’t already a fan of Dave and Jenny Marrs, we have a feeling learning more about their relationship, family, career, and philanthropic work will make you one.
They watch every episode with their fans
Following the season two finale of Fixer to Fabulous, Jenny penned a sweet note to fans on Instagram thanking them for tuning in each week. She also revealed that she and Dave watch each episode for the first time right when fans do. “We don’t get to see them before they air and it’s kind of like walking down memory lane as we watch,” she wrote. She went on to explain that it can be “nerve-wracking” at times “because we have no control over how the work will be received.”
Despite her and Dave’s qualms, they’re grateful for the feedback they receive. “You all allow us the great privilege of joining you in your living rooms on Tuesday nights and you send Dave and I the kindest words of encouragement and tell us how we made you laugh or how we inspired you to take a risk and paint a wall or try a project you’ve been putting off for years,” she noted.
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They renovated an Inn that you can stay at now
Dave and Jenny Marrs recently renovated a historic 1870’s house during their 2022 spin-off show Fixer to Fabulous: Welcome Inn.
Located near downtown Rogers, Arkansas, the three-bedroom Inn can accommodate up to 8 people and each room has its own en suite bathroom. Plus, in addition to the standard dining room, living room, and kitchen, the Inn includes a “Bourbon Room,” wine cellar, and a separate building called “The Smokehouse”—which includes an outdoor grill.
The Welcome Inn began taking reservations in May 2022, and you can book the entire home—for a two-night-minimum stay—through Airbnb.
They met in 2002 at work
After graduating college in 2002, Dave was offered a job at Newell Brands’ Rubbermaid, as he told About You. It’s through this role at Newell Brands that he met Jenny, who worked in a different department. The two quickly became close; however, Dave’s job profile required him to relocate and travel frequently. The couple dated long distance for a while until they decided to take the next step.
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In 2004, Dave left his job at the company and decided to move to Arkansas to pursue building and construction—which held a special place in his heart as he had grown up building log cabins in Colorado with his dad. “So, I did the corporate world for two years, which was enough. It allowed me to meet Jenny… but I just got sick of it,” he told the outlet. “When I said I [was] going to start building again, Jenny took a big leap of faith and said we’ll try Arkansas for a couple of years,” he recalled.
Fast forward nearly two decades later and Dave, a Colorado native, and Jenny, who hails from Florida, never left Arkansas. “I think, like a lot of people do here, we came for a stint and realized how great a place it is, Jenny said. “This is home.”
Jenny was Dave’s “sugar mama” for a while
After the couple moved to Arkansas in 2004, Dave started his own construction company, Marrs Developing. At the time, Jenny was still pursuing a career in marketing and sales. However, she pitched in as much as she could on the design end. While she had no official background in design (as she had studied marketing and public relations in college), she always loved getting in touch with her creative side.
“We were broke, and I had a real job. He was just starting, so I was the ‘sugar mama,'” Jenny jokingly said in 2018. She revealed that in 2012, eight years after Marrs Developing had launched, she officially left her corporate and joined Dave full-time at the company.
They’ve been married for 18 years
Jenny and Dave got married on April 2nd, 2005. “Thanks for being my main squeeze forever and ever, Mr. Marrs. I’m sure glad I snagged you,” she wrote on Instagram in 2017 for their 12-year wedding anniversary.
TV was never on their bucket list
While many HGTV stars have talked about the casting tapes they sent to the network that helped them land their shows (see Erin and Ben Napier’s reel here), Jenny and Dave never made one. In a video on their blog, they reveal that HGTV approached them with the prospect of a show after word got out about the couple’s business and their passion for reviving historic homes in a small-town community.
When the couple was approached by HGTV via email, Jenny thought it was a joke. During Fixer to Fabulous season one, she even said that she thought it was spam and deleted the message right away.
They live in a farmhouse from 1906
In a blog post titled “These Walls,” Jenny recalled the day in 2012 when Dave took her and their two sons at the time for a walkthrough of an old farmhouse that he had been asked to demolish. The house was an eyesore, yet the couple knew they had to save it.
That being said, they had to physically move the dilapidated farmhouse somewhere else quickly, as it was en route to becoming a parking lot. Fortunately, Dave had purchased an empty plot of land in the neighborhood a while back. Although he originally bought this land with no vision, it became the starting point for the couple’s first major restoration project as well as where they would raise their budding family.
They have five kids under 12
Currently, the HGTV stars have five children together: 4-year-old Luke, 9-year-old Charlotte, 11-year-old Sylvie, and twin boys Nathan and Ben, 12.
They waited 602 days to meet their daughter Sylvie
As you may already know, Jenny and Dave adopted their daughter Sylvie from the Democratic Republic of Congo in Central Africa. They knew instantly she was the one on Nov. 12, 2012 — that’s the day they came across her adoption profile online and started the process. By August 2013, the paperwork was settled and she was finally their legal child.
Dave and Jenny were hoping to welcome her home within the next month but ran into a major roadblock. The Congolese government shut down, which meant that no adopted children could leave because as exit letters had been suspended. These letters are required for a child to leave the country.
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During this grueling waiting period, Jenny became pregnant with their now-9-year-old daughter Charlotte. Unfortunately, Charlotte was a high-risk pregnancy for Jenny. That being said, Dave took the lead in trying to bring Sylvie home as he was the only one who could travel back and forth to Africa.
“I specifically went over to Congo, waited outside our U.S. embassy to try to get in and plead my case with the U.S. ambassador,” Dave told People in 2019. “When I tell you, anything that we could do… we were on the phone with congressmen, with our state representatives—like, the Vatican, we tried.”
Finally, on July 8, 2014, Sylvie’s foster mother was given permission to fly her to America, and Jenny and Dave finally welcomed their new daughter home. It was just a little over 600 days after they knew she was the one and started the adoption process. She joined them at age 2.
Jenny is older than Dave
Jenny Marrs was born on January 24, 1979. She is currently 44 years old. Dave Marrs was born on February 26, 1980. He is currently 43 years old.
The show originally wasn’t going to be called Fixer to Fabulous
The show’s pilot first aired in November 2017 with the title Almost Home. After a positive response from audiences, HGTV greenlit the series for eight hour-long episodes—or in other words, eight stunning transformations, each with a strict six-week timeline. This was a totally new (and fast-paced) ballgame for Jenny and Dave; however, they quickly adapted. By the time Almost Home was ready for air in October 2019 (after months of delays) the network decided to change the name to Fixer to Fabulous… and the rest is history.
They started their blueberry farm to help kids in Zimbabwe
Jenny and Dave’s berry farm, aptly named The Berry Farm, isn’t just a place for locals to come to pick their own fresh berries and/or host special events. As Jenny writes on the Marrs Developing blog, the couple started the berry farm “as a way to provide educational skills and opportunity for orphaned and at-risk teenage boys in Marondera, Zimbabwe.”
In particular, the blueberry is very symbolic to the couple as it is a crop that will continue to yield fruit over a long period of time. As the farm’s website notes, “if you nurture berries and properly care for them, their investment will span decades.” This is similar to “the way we are investing in the lives of the children in our program.”
They raise sheep, goats, donkeys, and more on their farm
The Marrs family has a plethora of animal friends in their backyard. While the animals make a great addition to The Berry Farm, Dave and Jenny never expected they’d have so many mouths to feed.
On Instagram, Jenny opened up about how their barnyard of animals came to be. In 2017, the family started caring for Trixie, a baby lamb, who needed around-the-clock bottle feeding. She was just too adorable to resist. As Trixie grew up, “we added a couple of friends and she had a baby,” Jenny wrote. Now the family is currently caring for a handful of sheep, cows, mini donkeys, chickens, bunnies, llamas, and more.
“Never, ever, ever did I expect to live on a farm with animals that we care for each day and actual food that we produce and eat,” Jenny explained. “Yet, here we are. Making it up and learning as we go.”
Jenny and Dave place an American flag on every house they renovate
Every Jenny and Dave Marrs renovation project isn’t complete without an American flag. As Jenny wrote on Instagram: “It’s important for us to place an American flag on every house in honor of everyone who has served our country; including my amazing Father-in-law and my Papa.”
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Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHY
