Joshua Duggar Biography

Joshua Duggar gained recognition after appearing in several TLC and Discovery Health one-hour specials with his family starting in 2005. On September 29, 2008, he began appearing on his family’s reality television series, 17 Kids and Counting, which was later renamed twice as the family grew bigger and became known as 19 Kids and Counting. While the show primarily focused on his mother’s last five children, his marriage to Anna Keller was featured in the episode “A Very Duggar Wedding” on January 25, 2009. In the following years, the show covered his first child Mackynzie’s first birthday celebrations, as well as the arrival of his next two children, Michael and Marcus. The couple announced expecting a fourth child on the show months before it was cancelled in July 2015. Moreover, he and his wife had recounted the first five years of their marriage in a TV special titled Josh & Anna: Our Story, aired on October 22, 2013.

In December 2006, the Duggar family’s appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show was cancelled after an anonymous source reported Joshua Duggar for past sexual misconduct. However, the cancellation and its reason were not known to the public apart from a lone blog post from 2007, which termed Joshua as a "child molester". Later in May 2015, In Touch Weekly magazine acquired more details of the incident through a Freedom of Information Act request and reported that Joshua molested five underage girls, including four of his sisters, in 2002-03. His family had consulted church elders and sent him away from home for three months for counseling and physical labor. They also took him to Joseph Truman Hutchens, an Arkansas State Trooper who himself was later convicted of child pornography, who gave him a "stern talk" but did not take any official action. By the time the investigations happened in 2006, no charges could be filed against Joshua as the case was not within the statute of limitations according to state law. In August 2015, Joshua’s name was revealed in the data leak from the Ashley Madison website, which enabled extramarital affairs, following which he admitted to watching pornography online and being unfaithful to his wife. In November that year, an adult actress brought assault charges against him during consensual sex at a strip club, but it was later dropped. Joshua was arrested on federal charges of receiving and possessing child pornography on April 29, 2021. He was found guilty on all charges on December 9, 2021 and is currently awaiting sentencing in May 2022.

Joshua “Josh” Duggar was born on March 3, 1988 in Tontitown, Arkansas, United States as the eldest child of and James Robert, a real estate agent, politician, and television personality, and Michelle, a stay-at-home mom. His parents, ultra-conservative born-again Christians, believed children to be blessings from God and went on to have 18 more: twins Jana and John-David, Jill, Jessa, Jinger, Joseph, Josiah, Joy-Anna, twins Jedidiah and Jeremiah, Jason, James, Justin, Jackson, Johannah, Jennifer, Jordyn, and Josie. As a child, Joshua’s routine included a midmorning Bible reading with his father and home-school lessons with his mother. He passed the state’s test for a general equivalency diploma at the age of 16. He considered applying for distance learning at a California law school, but did not attend college.

Joshua Duggar started dating Anna Renée Keller in 2006, shortly after meeting her at a homeschooling convention. As Anna did not want to get engaged until she was 20, he proposed to her on her 20th birthday on June 23, 2008. They got married, and shared their first kiss, on September 26, 2008 at the Buford Grove Baptist Church in Hilliard, Florida. The couple has seven children together: Mackynzie (b. October 9, 2009), Michael (b. June 15, 2001), Marcus (b. June 2, 2013), Meredith (b. July 16, 2015), Mason (b. September 12, 2017), Maryella (b. November 27, 2019) and Madyson (b. October 23, 2021). The couple went through marriage counseling after Joshua completed a faith-based rehab treatment following his involvement in the 2015 cheating scandal.