Last week, fans learned that first name hyphenate and oft-overlooked Duggar Joy-Anna is courting Austin Fortsyth.
There’s been concern over how much Forsyth knows about the Josh Duggar sex scandals that shocked the world and shamed Joy-Anna’s family last year, but it seems the man does have an idea of what he’s getting himself into.
But that doesn’t mean there’s no secrecy surrounding the latest Duggar courtship.
Every aspect of the Duggars’ public life is carefully coordinated and Joy-Anna’s courtship is no exception.
Sure, fans just learned about Joy-Anna and Austin, that doesn’t mean it just began.
We don’t know exactly when the relationship started, but fans have done some sleuthing, and it seems that Austin and Joy-Anna began preparing their announcement around August.
The Forsyth family owns a historically-themed tourist attraction called Fort Rock Family Camp, and it based on the business’ website, it was in August that the family began preparing for life in the public eye.
The site underwent a massive overhaul, with some information about the personal lives of the Forsyth’s removed, and some added.
As you can see, the changes included an addition of a photo featuring Joy-Anna standing with the Forsyth family.
Hardly conclusive evidence, but many have taken it as a sign that it was in August that the Forsyths began to prepare themselves for the fact that there would soon be a lot more traffic coming to their small and seldom-updated family website.
For as much as they live their lives in the public eye, the Duggars can be surprisingly secretive, and Austin and Joy-Anna might never come forward with the exact date that they started courting.
We know that they’ve known each other for most of their lives, due to the friendship between their families.
(15 years, according to some accounts).
But it remains unclear when they went from friends to “courtship partners” (the Duggars don’s use the terms “boyfriend” or “girlfriend,” for reasons that are clear only to them).
Critics felt that Jinger Duggar moved too fast in her relationship with Jeremy Vuolo, and it’s possible that the family is trying to avoid a repeat of that situation by refusing to reveal the exact date that Joy-Anna’s courtship began.
Maybe it’ll be an effective strategy – but we doubt it.