00:00This is Joseph. He fell in love with Selena.
00:05People have called it sick of our relationship after they found out we were cousins.
00:09Why would you marry your cousin?
00:11Disturbing and disgusting. I'd be embarrassed if I were those kids.
00:15Before the DNA test, did you have any suspicions that you two were related at all?
00:20Don't break it.
00:22Good job.
00:25We met at a Halloween party.
00:27We just decided, hey, let's go on a date. And then we went to bowling alley, right?
00:31I told her if I get one pin on this next throw, you have to give me a kiss.
00:36I got my one pin that I wanted.
00:38And we kissed.
00:42We were like inseparable after that.
00:44Some magnets got attached.
00:45Yeah, we were like this.
00:48This July, it will be 17 years of marriage.
00:51And we've been together for 17 years and four months.
00:54We had a short courtship.
00:56We have three kids, two boys, one girl.
00:58Grandpa's supposed to be coming over later. It's okay.
01:02You know, a happy marriage is your belly.
01:05It's through the belly.
01:09I started really diving into my DNA because I wanted to find out my heritage.
01:16My daughter, she's really dark skinned.
01:19And then my son, he has curly hair.
01:22My middle child, he's light skinned.
01:24When everyone would ask, like, what are you? What are you?
01:27I didn't really give an answer besides, hey, I'm Native American.
01:31Before the DNA test, we had no suspicion whatsoever.
01:35We sent in our swabs.
01:37There was a match.
01:40There's a database, a whole thing of cousins pull up.
01:43And he pulls up and I go, oh, goodness.
01:48When I realized that we were cousins, I was a little sick to my stomach.
01:53And he goes, no, babe, it's nothing.
01:57He was in complete denial.
01:59I was like, this is weird. I can't believe we're cousins.
02:04And then he started realizing little things started coming up.
02:07And he's like, okay, maybe we are related.
02:10The DNA test has confirmed that we are third to fifth cousins.
02:16In my head, I thought we were supposed to get divorced.
02:20And then I started more thinking to myself, like, hey, for our children, for our household,
02:26we need to keep it together and stay together.
02:30It was a pivotal moment for us because you're not supposed to look at your cousin or be with your cousin.
02:35And I didn't mean it, but it happened that way.
02:38We've gone this far.
02:40And to death, it was part of my book.
02:43So I wasn't going to leave over something like that.
02:46When you first told your children, how did they react?
02:49They didn't ask too many questions.
02:51My son, my middle, he goes, well, does that make us sister and brother and cousins then?
03:00I guess so, yeah.
03:02Bingo.
03:03How do you feel about everything?
03:05It's kind of normal because since they're my parents and like there's nothing really weird about it
03:09because they've been married for a long time.
03:11Sometimes I feel a little bit weird about it because it's not something you want to brag about
03:14or like put out to the world or nothing like that.
03:16They found out before they got married.
03:18I think there'd be something obviously wrong with that.
03:20But since they found out after, there's not one single problem I see wrong.
03:24I first heard about it and it wasn't that special to me.
03:30I just kind of forgot about it because I was pretty young.
03:32I am related to my husband.
03:35I was like sitting there one night and I was like, let's just put this in here.
03:40And I did not know it was going to blow up that big.
03:44I did not.
03:45One person on there said, this is so disturbing.
03:49Why would you marry your cousin?
03:51They look so much alike.
03:53How did they not know?
03:54I feel bad for the kids.
03:56Hopefully people don't bully them.
03:58I'd be embarrassed if I were those kids.
04:02And that's just the sensitive spot on me when they bring the kids up into it.
04:06For their social life, getting out as much as it did to the bully part of it,
04:10that was one of the first things that concerned me.
04:12It's irritating, but I stopped reading them.
04:15Like I said, you can't read into it and take offense to it.
04:19Because if you take offense to every negative post, you're going to be mad all the time.
04:23We accidentally married each other's cousin.
04:25It's like, whoop-dee-doo.
04:27And I did get a little backlash from that side.
04:31And I'm like, well, you guys don't want us to judge you,
04:35so why are you judging us?
04:49Did you ever have any ideas or suspicions about Selena and Joseph being cousins at all?
04:55No, I didn't.
04:56I wish we would have.
04:58But in a way, maybe we wouldn't be together.
05:01We're going to have three beautiful children.
05:03In a way, maybe it was a good thing we didn't know.
05:06Did you think they should have stayed together?
05:09Oh, definitely they should stay together.
05:12They're grandchildren.
05:13They're very good together.
05:15They complement each other, and they're our family.
05:18And they'll be together for a long time, just like me and my wife.
05:22I would have accepted them anyway.
05:24They're my family.
05:26There are a lot of people out there that will add their two cents to something
05:30without looking at everything.
05:32So, you know, guys, we love you, and we'll always be there for you.
05:37Guarantee it.
05:40Nothing's really changed since it all came out.
05:43Everything's been the same.
05:44To all the people that were giving us negative comments,
05:47it's easy to speak on the outside when you don't know the whole inside story.
05:50One year in, five years in, we found out almost 11 years later, three kids later.
05:55It's just not something you can just break up and walk away from.
05:58I think that the future holds a lot more good, you know, like our kids.
06:05I just want to see them succeed.
06:07And eventually down the road become grandparents.
06:09Long, long, long way down the road.
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