A Love Letter Life

More than 2.3 million people watched Jeremy and Audrey Roloff get married on TLC’s hit show “Little People, Big World,” and their love story has captivated countless audiences ever since. Though the two no longer star on the show, they continue to share their heart and their lives with the public through social media, their work with Beating 50 Percent, their Behind the Scenes podcast, and now, their new book, A Love Letter Life: Pursue Creatively, Date Intentionally, Love Faithfully.

From the outside, Jeremy and Audrey’s story appears picture-perfect, but A Love Letter Life reveals surprising details of their relationship journey, beginning with a blind date that led to a long-distance relationship, overwhelming obstacles, and finally, marriage. Alternating between their voices, the book delves into many sensitive subjects and offers practical advice for couples on topics like protecting purity, breaking through emotional walls, and fighting well.

It is clear that love is not just something Jeremy and Audrey fell into, but something they live out everyday and encourage others to do as well. Despite their young age, their journey has taught them lessons that truly anyone can benefit from, so we at Milk & Honey Magazine were thrilled to be able to sit down with Audrey and hear her thoughts on how we can build creative, intentional, and faithful relationships like her own.

Let's get to know Audrey!

On What Inspired the Book:

Our wedding was nationally televised and a lot of people who watched it wanted to know the rest of ourstory, so we started sharing more about it and it became a big passion of ours. Jeremy and I have always had a huge heart for relationships and have always wanted to be real and transparent with what we share on the internet. Before we wrote the book, we started a community called Beating 50 Percent to help couples be more creative, intentional, and faithful in their love stories—which is now the subtitle of the book. Throughout our relationship, we’ve been poured into by incredible mentors, which has been such a gift, so we asked ourselves how we could take the wisdom we’ve received from the older generation and repurpose it for our own generation. Our ministry is truly our overflow.

On Living Life in the Public Eye:

Jeremy and I always say that we weren’t designed to be in the spotlight, and that we weren’t made to be worshipped and followed. The hardest part for me is making sure my intentions are in check. It can be really easy to get wrapped up in that world, but Jeremy, having grown up in that environment, has helped me adapt to it since it’s much newer to me. The critiques and the hater comments and the trolls are hard, but at the end of the day, I have to remind myself that I don’t have context. I don’t know them. I don’t know what their struggle is. I don’t know what I said that ticked them off or what their vendetta is against me, but there’s more to their story and it’s not my job to win them over. It’s not my job to win anyone over. There’s a lot of pressure, but I think it would be a lot harder if Jer and I didn’t have each other to keep the other in check.

One thing that keeps us sane in the craziness is taking a weekly Sabbath in which we don’t work, open our emails, or go on social media, and we make ourselves available to our friends and family. It’s a time for us to do the things that we delight in and to be with the people that we love. It’s really been a lifeboat for us. Without it, I think we’d both be constantly burnt out, overwhelmed, and stressed. We’ve had to give ourselves some grace with this book tour, but otherwise we’re really strict about it; we won’t even open our phone apps on Sundays, which is something I recommend to everybody. In the world that we live in right now, we’re all so addicted to our phones, and I think phones are one of the biggest threats to love stories.

On Keeping a Healthy Dating Perspective:

After I broke up with my previous boyfriend, I put a lot of pressure on myself to make sure the next person I dated would be my husband. I think we should all want that for ourselves, but if things don’t work out, it doesn’t mean we failed or that the relationship wasn’t meant to be. We need to give ourselves that grace in the dating journey. I mean, how are you going to find a husband if you don’t go on a date? And how are you going to get to know someone if you don’t go on a couple dates?

I have a lot of Christian girlfriends who come up with a whole list of excuses not to date someone—before they’ve even met them! Girls, just go on the date. A lot of people give up when sparks don’t fly on the first date. But, it wasn’t “sparks fly” for Jeremy and I on our first date—he pursued me for two years before we really opened up to each other! Jeremy shares in the book that meeting me was a wake-up call for him. There was a slight stirring in his heart, and he began to think he might be able to see himself with me. That could be the case for a lot of people. Sparks might not fly during the first date, but the meeting might spark something in you, and that’s something to pay attention to.

On Being Single and Searching:

What I would tell single women is that even though you’re not dating right now, you’re still writing your story. When I was single, I prayed for my future husband and wrote those prayers down in a journal. There were a lot of other things I did that prepared me for Jeremy, too—becoming solid in my walk with the Lord, making good friends, finding good mentors. All those things prepared me for marriage and helped me be a better human.

I also encourage women who are single and searching to search for a friend. There’s a reason older couples say often they’re married to their best friend. Friendship is a great foundation for marriage, as well as a means to protect oneself from dabbling in sexual intimacy too early. On the flip side of that, though, we have to be careful who we’re spending a lot of time with. We can choose who we spend a lot of time with, but we can’t help who we fall in love with.

On What She’d Tell Her Engaged Self:

One thing I wish I would have known before I got married was how helpful tools like the Enneagram are. Learning about our personalities has been so helpful for us in understanding both ourselves and one another so that we can love each other better. Reading books about the Enneagram, for instance, taught me to view Jeremy’s differences as gifts rather than opposing or clashing traits.

On Writing While Still “In It”:

There are a lot of marriage books out there written by our parents’ and our grandparents’ generations, but there’s not a lot written by people our age who are “in it.” In A Love Letter Life, we share all of our struggles, all of our failures, as people who are on the journey with our readers. Trust me, even though we have a following and a platform, we have the same struggles most of our readers have! I think that makes it even more important for us to share our experience and what we’ve learned so far about how to date, how to prepare for marriage, and how to thrive as newlyweds in the world we live in right now. We’re just telling our story; we never claim to be experts.

On the Importance of Remaining Intentional:

Just because something isn’t spontaneous doesn’t mean it’s not romantic or beautiful. Once Jeremy and I got married, and especially after we had our daughter, we really had to start planning things more carefully. That’s true for any successful business, though—whether a church, a corporate organization, a school, or a sports team. They all have clear mission statements, goals, and annual summits or retreats. Why not incorporate those things into our marriages? Why not be as creative, intentional, and faithful in our relationships as we are in our work? The marriage relationship is the most powerful relationship, so shouldn’t we want to invest in it and design a plan for its success?

The dear Audrey pictured with M&H interview conductor Amy Cummins, above.

*M&H does not own photos.