Joy-Anna Duggar Recalls ‘Hundreds of Guys’ Being Lined Up to Date Her Sisters amid TLC Fame, Including Men ‘from Jail’

Her husband Austin Forsyth revealed that men would approach the Duggar family patriarch, Jim Bob, for the chance to date them “literally everywhere we went”

Everyone wanted a Duggar sister — including men behind bars, according to Joy-Anna Duggar Forsyth!

On the Oct. 16 episode of The Unplanned Podcast, Joy-Anna reflected back on what it was like growing up on their family’s TLC television show, 19 Kids and Counting, and the courting offers her father Jim Bob Duggar would receive from men around the country.

While opening up about their own dating experience, Joy-Anna, 26, and her husband Austin Forsyth revealed that the Duggar family patriarch would regularly field “hundreds of guys” who wanted the chance to date his daughters.

“I had my keepsake boxes. I had letters in there from when I was like 16-17,” she recalled, noting how “random” men or “guys from jail” would pen messages professing their love. “My mom obviously would read them first, because she’s like, ‘This is weird,’ but then we all laugh about it.”

Joy-Anna said that one standout man had nice “cursive handwriting” and wrote this “whole long letter about how good he is [and] is an option for me, and God’s telling him that I should marry him, all this kind of stuff.”

While she only received one letter with pictures “from jail,” some of her older sisters would receive “multiple” from men who prison who would watch the show and write letters. Despite the influx of proposals, Joy-Anna revealed that some people would ask to be “pen pals” rather than asking for their hand in marriage.

Some of these requests would be made in person. Austin recalled how men would approach Jim Bob “literally everywhere we went” — even on family vacations — asking, “Hey, can I talk to your daughter?”

Austin added that Jim Bob had a “vetting process” and confessed that the idea of dating someone on a television show had been intimidating.

“This is obviously when the show was still blown and going,” he explained. “I think that’s why Jim Bob wanted to have a month and a half relationship with me before, to see how real it is.”

“To introduce a guy onto your family’s TV show and then next season or next episode, he’s gone, like [you] just don’t want that constant drama,” Austin continued. “I don’t blame him at all for wanting to [tell] the guys that came like, ‘Let’s nail it down.'”

Instead, they kept “everything quiet” and he and Jim Bob made sure his relationship with Joy-Anna had potential for something greater before going public with it and featuring him on the show.

Joy-Anna and Austin got married in May 2017 after getting engaged just a few months after announcing their courtship on the special episode of Counting On: Jinger’s Wedding in November 2016. The two had been friends for 15 years before dating.

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In February 2017, Joy-Anna told PEOPLE that she and Austin had “gotten to experience so much already in our relationship,” including “Lots of church ministries, road trips, hiking, hunting and remodeling houses together.”

“It’s really special that I got to grow up with him and my family knows him really well,” she said at the time.