It was love at first kiss.
And just six months later, Celina and Joseph “Joe” Quinones wed and went on to welcome three children.
After a decade of marriage, the couple had built their dream life together.
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Until Celina began researching her family tree and discovered her lineage overlapped with Joe’s.
The couple were cousins.
“There was some of our friends who said we look alike, but we didn’t think anything of it,” Celina tells 7Life of how she unearthed their family secret.
“We were both in shock.
“I was like, ‘Oh my goodness are we meant to be together?’.”
The couple, from Colorado in the US, initially kept their ancestry link a secret.
Navigating the truth of their DNA connection behind closed doors, after months of deliberating the happily married couple decided to stay together.
And their marriage is stronger than ever.
Now, five years later, Celina and Joe have launched dating platform Before We Be helping prevent people from sparking up a relationship with someone they are related to.
No suspicions
Celina and Joe wed in July 2006 after just six months of dating.
The mum of three says the moment she locked lips with Joe it was “love at first kiss”.
Both brunette and with dark eyes, a few friends made passing comments about the couple looking similar but the couple never thought anything of it.
And when the big day came, family members didn’t recognise each other.
For the Quinones, the thought they were related never even crossed their mind.
Two years later, they welcomed their first child and in the following years they welcomed two more.
They moved into their dream home and began life as a regular suburban family of five.
Then one day in 2018, Celina became invested in her and Joe’s ancestry and began tracing both of their roots online.
“I decided to do a DNA test to be able to figure out more,” Celina explains.
“And that’s when I found out we were related.”
The at-home test seemed harmless.
But when the results arrived, they left both Celina and Joe stunned.
“We were in shock,” she says, adding she will never forget seeing her and Joe’s DNA link flash up on the computer screen.
Not knowing what do with the information, the pair kept the discovery a secret.
They dug further into the link in private and Celina confesses she even contemplated divorce.
The couple discovered Joe’s grandmother on his father’s side was adopted, but a lack of records meant their DNA link was missed.
According to their research, Celina and Joe are somewhere between third and fifth cousins.
“Initially, we told nobody. I kept it secret, maybe super close friends,” Celina says.
With the DNA results in, Celina and Joe began unravelling their whole relationship.
Together for more than a decade and with three now-teenage children, Celina confesses it took a while to digest the news.
“(It was) weird but then I got over it because I see how beautiful my family is,” she says.
The parents then sat their children down and broke the news to them — Celina says none of their children showed any interest.
Now, the couple claim their relationship is stronger than ever and, last year, Celina decided to share her shock revelation on TikTok.
The video was seen millions of times and she received a lot of backlash for her honesty.
But the mum doesn’t regret revealing her “truth”.
The couple have since launched their dating website hoping to remove the stress of a shock DNA link from relationships.