Joanna Gaines Reveals She Knew She'd Marry Chip on Their First Date: 'Right Off the Bat'

Joanna Gaines knew Chip was the one almost from the moment they met, more than 20 years ago.

The Fixer Upper stars romance began when Chip saw Joanna in commercials for her father's Waco, Texas, auto shop and, he admits in new special edition of PEOPLE, Chip & Joanna Gaines: 20 Years of Marriage and Magnolia, "I started hanging out at her dad's place of business incessantly."

"He kept needing brake work and his tires rotated and balanced," says Joanna. The two talked for an hour at the garage, and a week later she agreed to go out with him. "I don't know if I should say this out loud," she adds, but Chip gives her a nudge

"Right off the bat, you were smitten," he says. She nods.

"Starstruck. Right off the bat." Before then, she recalls, "I was always attracted to quiet guys, to the guy that you didn't know what he was thinking. When Chip and I went on our first date, he didn't stop talking! In my mind I was like, 'Okay, this isn't going to work. Because he is not quiet, he's not mysterious. He's very just out there.' . . . Then I heard this voice say, 'This is who you're going to marry.' Call it God, call it whatever. This is the man you're going to marry."

She explains that besides being a big talker, Chip was also a good listener, which she found attractive. "There's a big difference in people who hear and listen," she says. "Chip would listen." And listening to his wife now admit to a voice in her head that told her she would marry him, Chip cannot resist asking: "On the first date?"

"I remember seeing him talking, and then I couldn't hear him anymore," Joanna continues. "And I'm arguing with my inner self, saying, 'This is not the person.'"

"Were you really?" Chip asks. "Was it like severe desperation? You were kind of arguing? Sad." And then they're both laughing about it.

When Joanna canceled their second date, a coffee meet up, because she had hurt her back, Chip waited for her to reschedule. "I could tell she was totally smitten," he says. "But then, as she refused to call back, I was like, 'What is going on with this girl? I'm done with these games.' She didn't realize that we were in a game. She didn't realize that all of this anxiety and anguish had occurred all these months."

Eventually, he asked her out again. One year later, in December of 2002, they were engaged.

Says Joanna, "We both were like, 'This isn't really who we thought we'd end up with.' But now we realize it was a perfect thing for us."

Two decades on, the couple are parents to five kids and and proprietors of a massive home design empire that includes the Magnolia Network, numerous product lines, vacation rentals, books and a retail and entertainment district called Magnolia Market at the Silos that has helped transformed their modest home town into a tourist destination.

With more from the Gaineses, as well as interviews, recipes, and home ideas from Magnolia Network experts including the Maine Cabin Masters, Zoë François of "Zoë Bakes," Hilton Carter, chef Erin French, garden guru Jamila Norman, and many others, pick up PEOPLE's new special edition, Chip & Joanna Gaines: 20 Years of Marriage and Magnolia, available now wherever magazines are sold.