Jinger Duggar has been smitten with Jeremy Vuolo from the very beginning, driven by their sense of shared values and mutual admiration.
His good looks and sense of style didn’t hurt, though.
As you may know if you watch Counting On online, Jinger met him through her sister Jessa Duggar and Jessa’s husband, Ben Seewald.
That’s not a surprise, as the family often marries within its own social circle; Joy-Anna and Joseph Duggar also married family friends.
Jeremy was different though; Jessa recently shared how she knew he would be the perfect guy for her little sister right out of the gate.
The two sisters are famously close, even in a famously close family with 17 other siblings; Jessa and Jinger may in fact be the closest.
She and Seewald were both in agreement, too.
“Once we started talking, I thought, ‘Okay, I really need to stay in touch with this guy somehow,” Ben said of his first time meeting Vuolo.
Jeremy added similarly, “We clicked. You know, there’s some people you meet in life and you get along with them right away.”
“That’s how it was me with me and Ben especially.”
“So we started keeping in touch.”
Jessa said it was something particular – albeit superficial – about her now-brother-in-law that stood out, too … and that Jinger concurred.
“I remember what you were wearing that night because Jinger told me that she loved this certain kind of sweater,” she said.
Jessa recalled noticing Jeremy “wearing that sweater. And so I thought, ‘Oh, Jinger would really like this guy’s style."”
Jeremy laughs off these “little details” he didn’t think about but Jessa did, though fashion has been central to their romance, ironically.
Ever since they got married and Jinger relocated to Laredo, Texas, where Jeremy lives and works as a pastor, she’s come into her own.
The Duggars’ strict dress code has been well documented over the years, but Jinger is sticking it to Jim Bob left and right it feels like.
We’ve seen Jinger Duggar wearing tight pants, shorts, heels and other outfits that, while still conservative, are unheard of in her family.
Vuolo is hardly a heathen – he has encouraged women not to dress seductively as to tempt men – but he says he’s also realistic.
“It is your liberty as to whether you dress modestly with a modest pair of pants, or with a skirt, or with a T-shirt, or with a blouse,” he said.
In Vuolo’s mind, the point of the Bible was not to create “an army of Christian clones” who all follow the same endless list of restrictions.
When it comes to what people do in life, you’re either serving God or you’re not, but “Jesus does not save people to make them wear skirts.”
This flies in the face of Duggar dogma, as expressed in the girls’ 2014 book Growing Up Duggar, where they explain the dress code.
“We do not dress modestly because we are ashamed of the body God has given us; quite the contrary,” they said then.
“We realize that our body is a special gift from God and that He intends for it to be shared only with our future husband.”
Clearly, Jinger’s position on that has evolved over the past few years, while Jessa’s and Jill’s have not. To each their own?