Abby Hensel, who entered the spotlight in TV appearances with her conjoined twin Brittany, is now married.
Abby and Brittany first gained the attention of the public when they appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1996, when they were around six years old.
When they reached their 20s, the sisters became the subject of the TLC reality show Abby & Brittany, which documented the lives of the twins as they graduated college and set out into the real world.
Fast forward another decade, and Abby is now married to nurse and US Army veteran Josh Bowling.
The couple are pictured along with Brittany in what appears to be a wedding photo on the Hensels’ joint Facebook page, where the twins can be seen wearing a white dress while Bowling is dressed in a white suit.
Though news of the wedding has only just come to light, public records obtained by Today revealed that the pair actually tied the knot in 2021.
Three years on, the couple look happy in images of them travelling, hiking and generally enjoying life together.
Brittany, Abby and Josh live in Minnesota, where the sisters grew up, and the twins are now said to be working as fifth grade teachers.
Josh’s X account describes him as a ‘Christian, Father, Husband, Veteran, and occasional gamer’.
As dicephalus conjoined twins, Abby and Brittany share a bloodstream and all organs below the waist. Abby controls their right arm and leg, while Brittany controls the limbs on the left.
In the first episode of their reality TV show, the twins said people had been ‘curious’ about them since they were born.
“But our parents never let us use that as an excuse. We were raised to believe we could do anything we wanted to do,” they said.
Abby and Brittany’s parents, Patty and Mike, were given the option to separate the twins at birth, but ultimately decided against the procedure after being told there was little chance that both twins could survive.
In 2003, Abby and Brittany featured in a documentary titled Joined For Life in which Patty confirmed her children were interested in becoming moms themselves one day.
“That is probably something that could work because those organs do work for them,” she said.
Brittany confirmed their hopes for the future at the time, saying: “Yeah, we’re going to be moms. We haven’t thought about how being moms is going to work yet.
“But we’re just 16 — we don’t need to think about that right now.”
