People find love in unusual places, but one couple didn’t have to look far for their soulmate, instead finding it in their own family.
Michael Lee and Angela Paeng, from Utah, US, were close as children, but their relationship took an unusual turn when they began a secret romance.
The couple, dubbed the “kissing cousins”, just couldn’t keep their hands off each other.
The couple, who compare their romance to Romeo and Juliet, revealed their love story on Prime Video’s reality show Extreme Love.
Angela said: “We’ve known each other all our lives. We’ve been each other’s first crushes, first kisses and we happen to be first cousins.”
The couple first developed a strong connection when they were just kids.
“We were like in second grade, seven or eight years old and we immediately clicked and were like best friends,” Michael said.
“We were like in second grade, seven or eight years old and we immediately clicked and were like best friends,” Michael said.
Their friendship quickly turned into a young romance but the family soon found out, he added: “We were slow dancing in the closet, got caught kissing”.
After that, the family stepped in to try and put some space between the canoodling cousins, which they weren’t too happy about.
Angela explained: “I got pulled aside by my parents and they said ‘what’s going on?’ and my mum said ‘cool it Angie’ and we felt like from then on we were kind of kept apart and it felt unfair, it felt a little bit like Romeo and Juliet except instead of these warring families it’s the same family.”
The couple went on with their lives, and each married other people.
However, both of their marriages ended in divorce, and 10 years later, they reconnected at a family reunion, where they immediately felt “fireworks.”
“It felt like we were right back where we left off,” Angela said.
Michael went on to say that Angela was still “super hot.”
The couple decided to give in to their feelings for each other and began secretly dating.
“We were like in second grade, seven or eight years old and we immediately clicked and were like best friends,” Michael said.
Their friendship quickly turned into a young romance but the family soon found out, he added: “We were slow dancing in the closet, got caught kissing”.
After that, the family stepped in to try and put some space between the canoodling cousins, which they weren’t too happy about.
Angela explained: “I got pulled aside by my parents and they said ‘what’s going on?’ and my mum said ‘cool it Angie’ and we felt like from then on we were kind of kept apart and it felt unfair, it felt a little bit like Romeo and Juliet except instead of these warring families it’s the same family.”
The couple made the shock announcement by sharing an image of them with their tongues down each other’s throats to the family Facebook group and needless to say the news didn’t go down too well.
“They were shocked and horrified,” Michael said.
The couple’s other cousin, Cathy, took the news particularly badly.
“She’s the biggest hater in our family,” Angela said.
Michael added: “I’d really like to talk to her face to face to figure out why all this hatred, ‘no one else is as hateful as you where’s it coming from?'”
he couple were finally given the opportunity to attempt to make amends with Cathy during their appearance on Extreme Love.
Michael starts by telling her: “Imagine in your mind it’s just like your best friend, the person you’re most attracted to, the person that you want to be around the most, just so happens to be your cousin”.
But Cathy still wasn’t convinced, she replied: “That’s when you put the brakes on and back away, you can stop yourself, you have the same blood running through your veins
“I have a cousin as well as you guys, I think she’s beautiful but I don’t wanna go f**k her. I don’t wanna be known as the cousin of the incest cousins.”
Despite their family’s objections, the couple pursued their relationship and eventually married.
They had to cross the border to Colorado, however, because incest is illegal in Utah.
The couple found out they were expecting their first child together in 2019, but doctors were unable to find a heartbeat.
They revealed they were pregnant again six months later, and they welcomed a baby boy in 2020.
