We were always referred to as “the twins” growing up in a small town. Our mother dressed us in matching outfits (which I hated and Darlene loved). We both have blond hair and dimples, but Darlene’s are more bottomless. We’d only ever spent a week apart; we’d shared birthdays, baptisms, and everything else. We had the same wedding guest lists; we’d go dress shopping together and save time by each trying on half the outfits. It wouldn’t suit me if it didn’t suit Darlene.
My sister and I met our husbands in Twinsburg, Ohio, in August 1998. Darlene and I (identical twins born 45 minutes apart) were 27 at the time and were attending the town’s annual twins festival. It’s the world’s largest gathering, and we’d been there a few times to see friends. When Mark walked into the hotel bar on Saturday night, it was packed with attendees socializing. He must have αѕѕumed that we didn’t believe he had a twin and went to find his identical brother, Craig (four minutes older), to join us.
Darlene and I were both picky when it came to dating, but we both liked nice, funny guys with dark features and a sense of humor. She was attracted to Mark, but I thought Craig was cuter (although to anybody else, they would have been indistinguishable). They invited us to Cracker Barrel for brunch the next day, and before we left, we exchanged email addresses.
Darlene and I both received 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 like fate. We lived in Illinois, and they worked as web designers for the Houston Astros baseball team in Texas. They came to visit; we went on double dates and went on trips together.
We met in Florida in March 1999 to watch pre-season baseball. They detoured to a hotel hospitality room with a great view one night on their way to dinner and proposed, using matching rings cut from the same diamond. There was never any doubt in my mind that we would have a double wedding.
At our November wedding, Dad walked us down the aisle, one twin on each arm, while the priest read the vows simultaneously. We shared our first dance – to Shania Twain’s From This Moment On – and honeymooned together in the Bahamas. We relocated to Texas, where we purchased adjacent plots and had homes built with a shared backyard.
Darlene and Mark were eager to become pregnant right away, but Craig and I preferred to wait. In the end, I was the one who became pregnant first because Darlene miscarried – it was the only time being so emotionally and physically close was difficult.
My first ultrasound revealed two heartbeats: twins. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Brady and Colby were born in June 2001, 11 minutes apart. Craig enjoys researching twin statistics and has discovered only a few hundred cases of identical twins (where the egg splits in two) marrying identical twins; he has not discovered another set that had similar twins of their own. It is more common for fraternal (nonidentical) twins to marry fraternal twins. However, we are in a “lottery jackpot” situation.
Darlene was pregnant with her first daughter, Reagan, when our sons were born. Reagan is now 19 years old. We had a third son, Holden, 15, and she had another girl, Landry, 17. He should have been a twin as well; when I was scanned at eight weeks, there was an empty sac. Biologically, all of our children share the DNA of their siblings. They all have the same brown hair and brown eyes. Darlene’s daughters, who are only 16 months apart, are frequently asked if they, too, are twins. We even have dogs from the same litter – one for each of us.