SEEING DOUBLE

What do you get when two sets of identical twins marry each other and each couple then has a baby? One big happy family – and a genetic riddle

- COLIN HENDRICKS

TWO identical women and two men who are the spitting images of one another, cradling babies that look like clones of each other. The baby boys are both brothers and cousins. Confused? Little wonder – this is rather hard to wrap your head around.

Identical twins Brittany and Briana caused a stir when they married identical twins Josh and Jeremy Salyers in 2019. Their road to wedded bliss was even documented in the reality series Twins Marry Twins.

Now they’ve given birth to babies within months of one another. The blue-eyed boys are like two peas in a pod. Their mothers and fathers are identical twins, so the babies have the same DNA. This makes them quaternary twins since they’re genetically related to Brittany, Briana, Josh, and Jeremy.

“Such children aren’t just cousins, they’re also fully genetic siblings,” Briana says proudly.

The family’s unconventional story began at the annual Twins Days Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio in the US, which is the world’s largest gathering of twins. Briana and Brittany attended the festival every year with an eye to romance as they wanted to marry a set of identical twins.

They found the perfect pair of partners in Josh and Jeremy when they met in 2018. After a whirlwind romance, the Salyers brothers proposed during a romantic outing at Twin Lakes, and the sisters’ dream came true when they wed in a double ceremony a year later.

From the brides’ matching gowns and veils to the grooms’ tuxedos, everything was in duplicate – even the ministers officiating at the ceremony were twins.