A Utah woman discovered that she had unwittingly married her cousin after she became pregnant with his baby. The shocking discovery came as the couple was searching for baby names on the internet, according to Yahoo News.
Marcella Hill, 42, shared the revelation on TikTok last week. “So I’ve never publicly told anyone, but I accidentally married my cousin,” she began.
Marcella and Tage Hill, both 42, were researching names for their baby via their family trees, when they realized there were some similarities.
“We soon realized that my grandpa and his grandma were first cousins. It was super weird”, Marcella says of their moment of realization.
“I was sitting on the couch looking for names for the baby that we were about to have and I was on [genealogy site] FamilySearch,” said Marcella. “Husband’s next to me on his own FamilySearch and he’s like, ‘Oh that’s funny, we have the same grandma and grandpa’s names.’ “I look at this line and it’s all the same as mine,” she added. ” So I think, ‘Oh no no, you’re still logged into my account.’ Then we start looking at it and we realize my grandpa is his grandma’s first cousin.”
The story left commenters with many questions, including, in the words of one, “How didn’t y’all realize this at the wedding?”
In a follow-up video, Marcella explained how she managed to marry a cousin without her elders saying anything: The two didn’t have a wedding. “We got married at a courthouse after work on a Wednesday,” she said. “‘Let’s say we had the wedding, and my grandpa and his grandma were there, and we found out that we were third cousins at the wedding, what were supposed to do?”
Commenters reacted with a mixture of disbelief and amusement.
“So in a way, your baby is his own fourth cousin,” said one.
“Third cousins not a huge deal, you’re good. Hilarious though,” wrote another.
“I think you should have just not told anyone,” another writer offered.
One commenter concluded, “We’re all cousins if you go back far enough.”
