My sister and I encountered our spouses in the Ohio town of Twinsburg in August 1998. Darlene and I were 27 years old and visiting the town's yearly twins festival (we were identical twins delivered 45 minutes apart). We'd been a few times to catch up with mates at the world's largest party. As Mark stepped into the hotel bar on Saturday night, it was packed with attendees socializing. He might have believed we didn't even believe he was a twin, because he headed to call his identical brother, Craig (four minutes older), to meet us.
Darlene and I were both picky daters, but we shared a fondness for cool, hilarious guys with dark characteristics and a good sense of humour. She was attracted to mark, but I figured Craig was prettier (although to anybody else they would have been indistinguishable). They decided to invite us to brunch the very next day at Cracker Barrel, and we exchanged email addresses just before finally leaving.
Darlene and I both got an email from our preferred twin when we returned to work (we both worked as legal secretaries in the same firm after high school). It felt as if it was fate. We were in Illinois, and they were working as web designers for the Houston Astros baseball team in Texas. We double-dated and went on trips together when they came to visit. We got together in Florida in March 1999 to watch pre-season baseball.
They decided to drive to a resort hospitality room with a lovely viewpoint one night on their way to dinner and proposed with identical rings cut from the same diamond. There never was any doubt in our minds that we would have a double marriage. We were often referred to as "the twins" growing up in a small town. Our mother matched our outfits (which I hated and Darlene loved). Darlene's dimples are deeper than mine, and we both have white hair.
We'd only ever lived a week apart; we'd exchanged birthdays, baptisms, and everything else. We had the same invitations for our wedding, so we went dress shopping together and put on half of the outfits each. It really wouldn't suit me if it didn't suit Darlene. Dad led us down the aisle with one twin on each arm during our November wedding, and the priest performed the vows continuously.
We performed our first dance to Shania Twain's From This Moment On and honeymooned around each other in the Bahamas. Darlene and Mark wanted to have a baby right away, but Craig and I decided to wait. We settled in Texas, where we purchased adjoining plots and had new houses with a shared backyard. Darlene had a miscarriage, so I was the one who got pregnant first. It was the only time being so physically and emotionally connected had been difficult.
They discovered double heartbeats during my first ultrasound: twins. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. In June 2001, Brady and Colby were delivered 11 minutes separate. Craig enjoys reading twin statistics and has only come across just few hundred instances of identical twins (where the egg splits in two) marrying identical twins; he has yet to come across another pair of identical twins that had identical twins of their own.
It's much more popular for fraternal (nonidentical) twins to marry fraternal twins – however ours is a “lottery jackpot” case. Darlene was pregnant with her first daughter, Reagan, when our sons were conceived. Reagan is now 19 years old. We had a third boy, Holden, 15, and she had another girl, Landry, who is 17. When I was checked at eight weeks, there was a vacant sac, so he should've been a twin as well.
Both of our children have the DNA of their siblings. They all have dark hair and brown eyes, and they all look similar. Darlene's twin daughters, who are just 16 months apart, are often asking if they, too, are twins. One dog from the same litter lives in each of our homes. Darlene always has a better understanding of how I'm feeling than I do.
Daily, we take public transportation to and from work and have lunch together. We go on errands together and get our hair styled by the same hair stylist.People are taken aback whenever they see all of us together; they normally note one pair of twins before the other. When we tell somebody new our story, the kids get angry, but we tell them, "That it is because of this story that you survive." I'll never get tired of saying it: I'm very fortunate
