25 Questions To Ask Your Grandparents

Looking to preserve your family legacy? Here are 25 questions to ask your grandparents that make conversation easy.

If you follow me over on Instagram, you probably know by now that talking to my grandma every single day was one of my goals for April, but it’s really sort of blossomed into a daily goal until I can get on a plane and go see her myself to make up for the fact that we had to celebrate her birthday on ZOOM. Truth be told – talking to her is the highlight of my day! 

What started out as normal calls has sort of morphed into a full blown dissertation of her life. Whoops. 

I was telling Dane in late March how much I had been enjoying my daily calls with her. Sadly, he lost all of his grandparents before we was truly old enough to sit down and hear their stories about life. He challenged me to think about questions I’d like to know the answers to and add them into our conversations. I told her about this and to my surprise, she was delighted! Now when I call, we talk about our days, I typically read her one of the stories I’ve had published recently (she doesn’t have the internet) and then she’ll say “Alright, what’s the question of the day?”

In any case, it really has given me insight into so many aspects of my grandma’s life and stories I’ve never heard her tell before. I would highly recommend this to anyone with living grandparents, or even parents. I catalog her answers every day in a Google doc, so I can never forget all the things we talk about and the snippets she shares.

I figured I would share a handful of the questions I’ve used if anyone is interested. Hopefully this helps to start some conversations with your family, too!

25 Questions To Ask Your Grandparents

1. How did you meet your spouse?

2. What is your best memory with your spouse?

3. What is your favorite season and why?

4. What is the best birthday memory?

5. What is the worst thing you did as a child?

6. What is your first memory?

7. Who has been the most influential person in your life?

8. What makes you angry?

9. What is your favorite food to make? What did you make a lot for your kids?

10. What is your favorite recipe?

11. What holiday meal is your favorite?

12. If you could pick one celebrity to be quarantined with, who would it be?

13. What is the best vacation you’ve ever taken?

14. What TV show was your favorite growing up?

15. Tell me about the first time you met me.

16. Did you have any pets growing up? How about when the kids were growing up?

17. What was your first job?

18. What was your first car?

19. Tell me about your wedding.

20. How did you choose your kid’s names?

21. Where were you when major events happened (Pearl Harbor, 9/11, JFK assassination, etc). 

22. Tell me about your grandparents.

23. What have you always wanted to do, but haven’t?

24. What are you most thankful for?

25. Do you have any secret talents? 

What I’ve found is that when I ask her the question, she will give me an answer and then as she sits on it for a bit longer, she will tell me a funny story that goes along with it or is tangential. It’s been fun and my hope is that this inspires some conversation at your house, too.