A conjoined twin who rose to fame after appearing on a reality show has been secretly married for three years, according to reports.
Abby Hensel, 34, from Minnesota, married nurse and army veteran Josh Bowling in 2021, according to public records obtained by news outlet TODAY.
Twins Abby and Brittany Hensel are probably America’s most famous conjoined twins after appearing in their own reality show on TLC.
Born in 1990, the girls have two heads, two hearts and two sets of lungs, but share everything else. Each twin controls her half of the body, so they have amazing coordination. They can drive and have both graduated from university with education degrees.
Recently, the TikTok account @abbyandbrittanyhensel shared a clip celebrating Abby’s big day, with the Facebook account Britt And Abby posting a photo of the couple.
The 2021 ceremony featured the twins in a lace-trimmed sleeveless wedding dress and the groom in a grey suit. Now fifth grade teachers, the pair resides in Minnesota, their home state, raised by a nurse and a carpenter parent.
The girls are dicephalic parapagus, meaning they’re fused side-by-side with two heads.
They have two spines fused at the pelvis, two hearts, two oesophagi, two stomachs, three kidneys, two gall bladders, four lungs – two are joined – a liver, one ribcage, a shared circulatory system and partially shared nervous systems.
From the waist down, all organs, including the reproductive organs, are shared.
They were born in 1990 with a partly-formed third arm which was removed when they were 12 and had surgery to correct spine curvature and help their breathing.
Capturing global attention in 1996 with appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show and Life Magazine’s cover, they lived quietly in Minnesota, avoiding media until starring in a TLC documentary at 16.
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