The story goes like this. When Derick Dillard met Jill he had come to the family home as part of a Christmas caroling group. It was Christmas 2011 and she was 20 years old. The couple got engaged in 2013 and married in 2014; their first child was born in 2015. They have three sons together. These are the major beats that make up their journey, but the part of the story that I find most interesting has to do with Derick, a prayer chain, and none other than Jim Bob Duggar.
As part of the podcast “Reality Life With Kate Casey” the couple spoke out about how it was the famous Duggar family connection that led them to a life together, also noting how Jim Bob was a key piece in their meet-cute and early romance. Yes, Jim Bob Duggar, who reportedly doesn’t get along with Derick, first encouraged him to date his daughter. Per the former missionary:
Basically, [Jim Bob] was interested in the ministry. I had already asked him if he would be a prayer partner of mine. The size church I went to, I didn’t have necessarily as many people to like [sic] write a name –we had to come up with a set of names that we had written down to become a prayer partner of ours with the organization I was going with. Some friends and I had just been at Jill’s house Christmas caroling because they were familiar with the family.
While the Christmas carol story is a topic both Jill and Derick have spoken about in the past, I had no idea that it was really Jim Bob who had spurred a connection between the reality couple. Derick confirmed it in his interview with Kate Casey’s podcast and he also explained that the connection with Jim Bob was really spurred when he decided to go to Nepal for a few years. Initially, he expected the prayer chain would be the extent of their relationship, but that didn’t turn out to be the case.
How Jim Bob Duggar Encouraged A Romance Between Jill and Derick
Jill also said it was her dad who “kind of introduced us or set us up.” Sure, they’d met at this infamous Christmas carol event, but it actually took Derick going thousands of miles away for a romance to spark. While he was away in Nepal (and traveling to various other places such as Japan), Derdick noted it was Jim Bob who really seemed to care what he was doing and check in, but there seems to perhaps have been a secondary agenda as well.
Toward the end of that time he was saying, ‘Well, my daughter Jill is studying to be a midwife and she really has a lot of similar goals that you have. I think y’all are on similar paths, have similar desires in where you want to go in your life with mission work. Here’s her number. You should give her a call.’
He took Jim Bob’s advice. They ended up Skyping several times while he was still living abroad, and those calls went so well they ended up on video for about five and a half hours apiece.
Jim Bob’s Relationship With Jill And Derick Dillard
Unfortunately, while there was support from Jim Bob early on, the couple’s relationship with the family patriarch took a downtick years later when the two were filming Counting On. They had a dispute over reality pay from TLC, which strained relations at first. In the time since, Jill has worn pants and taken other steps to be more of an independent person. The last straw may have been when Jill ultimately decided to publish Counting The Cost, a tell-all about her experiences growing up Duggar.
She recently revealed she has basically been estranged from the Duggar family for the most part, though she does attend major family events and has good relationships with some of her siblings. (Not her brother Josh, who is currently incarcerated and shunning Jill from prison.) It's unclear if time will heal these struggles within the family, but from now on it at least sounds like Jill and her husband plan to be publicly open about their past experiences and the path forward.
