Ashley Graham's Key to a Happy Marriage: 'Just Have Sex All the Time'

After eight years of marriage Ashley Graham knows how to keep things fresh with her cinematographer and director husband Justin Ervin.

“Just have sex,” she tells ELLE magazine in her new February cover story. “Have sex all the time. Even if you don’t feel like it, just have sex. I have found that if we haven’t had sex, we get snippy, and then if we are having sex, we’re all over each other. For us it’s like, ‘Oh, let’s have sex.’ And then we’re just right back in a great mood.”

While things are hot and heavy these days, before their marriage both Graham and Ervin remained abstinent until after they said “I do.”

“Something that it did for us was build up our friendship, and it also built up our trust and communication,” Graham explained about remaining abstinent. “Of course we were sexually attracted to each other; we would make out heavily. All those things were there. I wasn’t worried about, ‘What’s sex gonna be like with him?’ It was more, ‘Do I trust him? Is he someone I want to be with for the rest of my life?'”

Graham got candid about that part of their relationship in her 2017 memoir, A New Model: What Confidence, Beauty, and Power Really Look Like, saying that before she met Ervin (they met while volunteering at her church), she didn’t have the healthiest relationships with the men. “I slept with half of New York City,” she told ELLE, explaining that taking things slow was appealing to her at the time.

Their faith is still something that’s important to the couple and they have taken up fasting one day a week together. “When you fast and you pray, it’s bringing more sensitivity to hear from God,” she explained. “That’s exactly what we wanted; we were like, ‘Okay, we want more sensitivity to be able to hear from God in the big decisions that we’re making.’ We do it together because there’s a verse in the Bible that says, ‘Where two or more are gathered, He is in the midst.’ So as we do it together, it just makes it even stronger.”

When asked if kids are in her future, Graham is focused on her booming brand at the moment. “For me, being a wife and being a woman, happiness doesn’t equate to having kids,” Graham revealed. “Kids will come when they come. Happiness right now, is building with my husband and building my business.”

In addition to nabbing huge magazine covers and walking big-name runways (like Michael Kors), she has a podcast, Pretty Big Deal, is the host and executive producer of American Beauty Star and is starting the feel-good talk show, Fearless.

She also dabbles in design, with not one, not two, but three different collaborative contracts with Addition Elle, Swimsuits for All and Marina Rinaldi.

But she still sees more for herself. “Having a lifestyle brand is a very big goal for me,” she revealed.