Fact Check: Was Chip Gaines Really Affected by a Heart Attack? Delving into the Ongoing Speculation

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Chip Gaines smiles on a radio show wearing a headset

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If you’ve spotted a headline on a dubious site claiming to have intel on Chip Gaines’ “heart attack,” you’re not alone, because we’ve spotted a bevy of them, too. However, with neither Chip nor Joanna Gaines saying anything about it themselves, we’re going to go ahead and say this is less of an “untold truth” about Chip and more — well, nonsense.

On the off chance that you haven’t seen any of the headlines, here’s the gist of it: apparently, Chip suffered a heart attack in 2019 — not just any heart attack, though. According to one of the aforementioned dubious sites, Chip had a potentially deadly widowmaker heart attack. Though it’s not unheard of for people to survive widowmaker heart attacks, the odds aren’t great, and MercyOne estimates that only around 12% of people who have one will survive.

With figures like that, it’s a little unlikely that Chip would have had a heart attack and not spoken about it. After all, even though he and Joanna left HGTV in 2018, they went on to start their very own Magnolia brand soon after, so there would have been plenty of opportunity for them to mention it in one of their shows (or heck, even put out a statement from their brand). Plus, Chip’s book “No Pain No Gaines: The Good Stuff Doesn’t Come Easy” was released in 2021, and again, there was no mention of a heart attack. Considering the book delved into the challenges he’s faced and overcome over the years, something tells us the time he survived a heart attack would have cracked a mention.

Chip’s weight loss seems to have influenced the rumor

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So, if Chip Gaines didn’t have a heart attack, where did the bizarre rumor come from? From the looks of it, his weight loss was used as a starting point, with one site claiming he’d shed 20 pounds after surviving a widowmaker. However, as fans of the Gaineses will likely recall, Chip actually lost weight while preparing for the Silo District Marathon.

ICYMI, back in 2018, Chip started his very own marathon in Waco, Texas. This, after meeting a couple on a run in Central Park and asking if they thought he’d be able to get into it himself. Chip ended up learning that one of the runners, Gabriele “Gabe” Grunewald, was a cancer survivor who had started a foundation using her own track record as a runner to raise money for cancer research. Chip loved the idea, started training, established the now-annual Silo District Marathon, and lost a bunch of weight along the way (no widowmaker involved).

One hurdle (see what we did there?) that Chip endured on his weight loss journey was a minor injury. As he wrote for Magnolia Journal, he developed tendonitis and was advised by a doctor to sit out the full marathon in favor of the Silo District Marathon’s 5K. Of course, Chip being Chip, he didn’t. Even so, it is pretty noteworthy that, once again, heart health played no role in his injury or ability to complete the marathon. Chip may have had a few tragic moments in his life, but a heart attack hasn’t been one of them.