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Jinger Duggar Vuolo Just Shared the Stuff That Never Made It Onto ‘19 Kids and Counting’

May 11, 2026

Most people who grew up in a household of 21 don’t end up writing a New York Times bestseller dismantling the entire belief system they were raised in, but Jinger Duggar Vuolo isn’t most people.

Joining her husband, Jeremy Vuolo, and Will Cole on The Art of Being Well, she opens up about the parts of growing up Duggar fans still have questions about: the courtship rules, the teachings that shaped her childhood, and the genuinely wild things that happened inside their home.

Without naming names, she nods to her family’s recent headlines, referencing “some of the hardest seasons in our life.” Here’s what she’s ready to talk about.

Jinger Duggar Vuolo Just Shared the Stuff That Never Made It Onto ‘19 Kids and Counting’

The sweater that did all the work

Before Jeremy Vuolo was a pastor and Jinger’s husband, he was a former pro soccer player based in Texas who used to roast 19 Kids and Counting every chance he got. “I’d always make fun of the show,” he says. “Ben and Jessa were on the cover of People magazine and I took a picture of the magazine, sent it to the pastor’s daughters, like, ‘Hey, look, your favorite people are on the magazine.'”

Then Jessa and Ben Seewald (who’d just gotten married) ended up at his house one night for a gathering, and the rest is matchmaking history. Jessa went home and reported back to Jinger that there was this guy—a pastor, a former soccer player, and someone who wore “those sweaters you like.” That alone was enough. “It’s funny that thing got me a wife,” Jeremy says. “I didn’t even know it at the time. It was doing work for me.”

The 50-page questionnaire and the Subway problem

The Duggar courtship process famously comes with a long list of rules. No “I love you” until you’re engaged. No holding hands. No being alone, ever. And before Jeremy could even start dating Jinger, her dad sent him a 50-page questionnaire with around 260 questions covering everything from past sexual history to politics to whether he was in debt. Jeremy filled it out in two days and sent it back at 120 to 150 pages.

What actually broke Jeremy wasn’t the questionnaire—it was the chaperone rule. “I was a 27, 28-year-old pastor who was doing marriage counseling for people in my church,” he says, “but I couldn’t take my girlfriend out to Subway at 12 o’clock on a Tuesday without having a chaperone.” He went along with it anyway. “If that’s how I can honor her parents and if that’s what’s required, then of course.”

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The countless hours of teachings that cracked it all open

The turning point in Jinger’s worldview came when her dad asked Jeremy to listen to 60-plus hours of Bill Gothard’s teachings, which the couple ended up going through together over Skype. Gothard is the founder of the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), the controversial fundamentalist teaching that shaped everything about how the Duggar family lived. “Jeremy would pause and he’d say, ‘Wait, did you hear what he said?'” Jinger recalls. “This teacher was so masterful because he would take one verse of the Bible and twist it and make it say whatever he wanted to. And then he’d have you make a commitment to keep his rule that he made up.”

Gothard’s whole pitch, in her words: “Life is a very interesting cause and effect sequence. So what you do is you follow my rules and your life will turn out perfect. If you don’t, your life is going to be one disaster after another.” His rules included no off-beat drum patterns, no normal Christian music (only classical), no birth control of any kind, and yes, no Cabbage Patch dolls because they apparently brought evil spirits into your home. “I started to realize, ‘Oh wait, I’m leaning into these teachings, thinking that they are the Bible, and it’s actually not,'” Jinger says.

The strangers who stayed at the Duggar house

For anyone who missed this Duggar lore, the family used to let total strangers stay at their house. Fans would write letters or send emails asking to visit, and Jim Bob and Michelle would clear out an entire bedroom for them. Most went fine. One did not.

“There was once this couple who wrote and they said, ‘We want to come visit you,'” Jinger says. The mom walked in and immediately demanded all 25 windows be opened because of a bleach allergy. The husband, who was diabetic, refused the dinner Michelle had prepared, and his wife went out and got him a sugary dessert dinner instead.

Then in the middle of the night, “We hear these people walking around our house,” Jinger recalls. “And the wife is downstairs in our playroom on this old mattress that was below our climbing wall…So she’s down there putting her husband to sleep on this mattress with spring sticking out of it. And we’re like, ‘What the heck are you doing? This is so weird.’ Legit, we had characters in our house.”

The hosting era ended a few guests later. “Somebody, another guest, stole my diary out of my nightstand drawer,” Jinger says. “We were like, no more guests who were not vetted.”

Listen to the full episode on The Art of Being Well with Dr. Will Cole, available wherever you listen to podcasts.