Joanna Gaines’ Mom Spent Months Trying to Track Down Sister She Hadn't Seen in ‘Decades’ — and Found Her!

Joanna Gaines is reflecting on a heartwarming memory from her family trip to South Korea.   

In the cover story of Magnolia Journal’s spring issue, Joanna, 45, reveals her mom Nan spent months trying to track down the sister she left behind in South Korea ahead of their big family trip to Seoul in April 2023.  (Magnolia Journal is published by PEOPLE's parent company Dotdash Meredith.)

“My mom spent those months trying to contact her sister, who she hadn’t seen in decades,” Joanna writes in the issue of the time leading up to the trip. “The many years proved impossible to wade through. Number systems in South Korea had changed, making the number my mom had scribbled in her phone book useless.”

She adds that by the time they were boarding their flight and ready to take off, her mom was still searching for her sister. But that luckily changed once they touched down in Seoul. 

“A few days after we arrived, an old family friend was able to track down my aunt. My mom met up with her in the lobby of our hotel, and we all got to watch them embrace in that hard-to-explain way where it feels like a lifetime has passed but also no time at all,” Joanna recalls.

Describing the emotional reunion, she adds that everyone “had tears in our eyes, witnessing that missing part of my mom be found and restored.” 

The Fixer Upper star says her aunt immediately joined in on all of the activities the group had planned for the rest of the week and that her mom was “the proudest I’ve ever seen her.” 

After years of wanting to visit Seoul with her family, Joanna shares it was her husband Chip who declared 2023 would be the year they would finally make the trip. Along with getting their five kids on board, the couple persuaded 24 of Joanna’s family members to embark on the journey with them — including her dad, her two sisters, her uncles and her cousins. 

Joanna recalls seeing cherry blossoms in “full bloom” and visiting food markets as being among some of the highlights of their vacation. But nothing compared to seeing her whole family dressed in traditional Korean clothing, called hanbok, which she also documented on Instagram with a shot of her youngest son, Crew, all dressed up during the trip.  

In the issue, she adds, “Seeing my mom, Nan, in the place where her story began was surreal." Seeing her mom in hanbok for the first time, she writes, "it was almost as if I were seeing her for the first time.”

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Joanna’s parents met in 1969 while her dad, Jerry, was serving in the U.S. army in South Korea. After nearly three years, her dad went back to the U.S. and later sent her mom a letter asking her to marry him along with a plane ticket. The couple tied the knot in a San Francisco ceremony in 1972, marking the beginning of their over 50-year (and counting!) love story. 

While Joanna is prouder than ever of her Korean heritage now, she didn’t always feel that way.  During an exclusive interview with PEOPLE in Nov. 2022, the design expert revealed that being teased as a child led her to shun her roots for years. 

"We were literally the only Asians in our entire school," she told PEOPLE, referring to her sisters Mikey and Teresa. Joanna revealed that students used to call her names and mock her for eating rice in the cafeteria at lunch.

"It was deeply personal because that was half of my story," she continued. "I realized if this isn't accepted, maybe I need to hide it and play more into the other side of who I am."

Through writing her memoir, The Stories We Tell, she healed some of that past trauma and has now been fully embracing her heritage and passing it along to her five kids. Ahead of the book's release she shared, "My Korean heritage is one of the things I’m most proud of. I’m trying to make up for that lost time – the culture is just so beautiful. I think discovering who you are and what you were made to do is a lifelong journey.”

To read the full cover story, visit magnolia.com and pick up a copy of Magnolia Journal’s Spring 2024 issue out on newsstands on Friday, February 23.