Celina and Joseph Quinones, who married just four months after meeting and had three kids, were rocked when a family tree investigation took a twist. On the Love Don't Judge podcast, Celina said: "I started really diving into my DNA because I wanted to find out my heritage.
"My daughter is really dark-skinned, and my son has curly hair. My middle child is light-skinned and everyone would ask 'what are you what are you?' I couldn't really give an answer except Native American ."
The Colorado couple got the shock of their lives when their DNA swabs revealed they're much more than husband and wife - they're cousins!
Celina was shook, confessing: "When I realized that we were cousins , I was a little sick to my stomach. I was thinking, 'Should we get a divorce? Are we even supposed to be together?'".
She shared the experience on TikTok, not expecting her cousin-couple reveal to erupt online, with the video amassing millions of hits, reports the Mirror .
However, the joke turned sour as Celina faced a virtual onslaught, admitting: "I did not know it was going to blow up that big," and recounted the online horror, "One person on there said 'this is so disturbing, why would you marry your cousin? '".
"I started really diving into my DNA because I wanted to find out my heritage my daughter is really dark-skinned, and my son has curly hair my middle child is light-skinned, and everyone would ask 'what are you what are you? ' I couldn't really give an answer except Native American."
"When I realized that we were cousins , I was a little sick to my stomach. I was thinking, 'Should we get a divorce? Are we even supposed to be together?' I did not know it was going to blow up that big."
She added: "One person on there said 'this is so disturbing, why would you marry your cousin?'"
Celina revealed that the comments just kept coming. One person said: "They look so much alike, how did they not know? " Others expressed concern: "I feel bad for the kids, hopefully people don't bully them" and another admitted: "I'd be embarrassed if were those kids".
The couple's teenage son opened up about the surreal family twist, saying: "I feel a little bit weird about it, because it's not something you want to brag about or put out to the world or anything."
He also asked: "If they found out before they got married I think there'd be something obviously wrong with that but since they found out after there's there's not one single problem."
At the couple's wedding, none of their relatives knew of the connection. Celina and Joseph would later learn that Joe's grandmother on his father's had adopted, leading to a mix-up in records that veiled their familial ties.
"Colorado seems so big, but it's really not that big," muses Celina. "Everyone knows everyone, and most likely, everyone is related."
Despite the revelation, the couple has spun their unusual circumstance into innovation by creating Before We Be, a dating service dedicated to ensuring people don't accidentally date a relative.
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