'We were married for 10 years with three kids – then DNA test left me sick to my stomach'

A happily-married woman who used a 23andMe to trace her family tree began to doubt whether she should stay with her husband after seeing the results.

Celina and Joseph Quinones had a very short courtship, after just four months, and went on to have thee children together. It was after having kids that Celina decided to start investigating her family history.

She told the podcast: "I started really diving into my DNA because I wanted to find out my heritage – my daughter is really dark-skinned, and my son has curly hair my middle child is light-skinned, and everyone would ask ‘what are you what are you?’ I couldn't really give an answer except Native American.”

Both Celina and Joseph, form Colorado in the US, sent off DNA swabs. But when the results came back, they were stunned to find they were cousins.

“When I realised that we were cousins I was a little sick to my stomach,” Celina explained. “I was thinking, 'Should we get a divorce? Are we even supposed to be together?’"

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But then Celina decided to announce the surprising news about her husband on TikTok, because she thought it would be “funny.” The clip quickly gained millions of views.

She wasn’t prepared for the torrent of abuse that came her way after that. “I did not know it was going to blow up that big,” she said. “One person on there said ‘this is so disturbing, why would you marry your cousin?’”

Celina adds that there were dozens of other comments along those lines. One read: “They look so much alike, how did they not know?” Another commented: “I feel bad for the kids, hopefully people don’t bully them” while someone else said “I'd be embarrassed if were those kids”.

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Speaking about his mum’s shock discovery, the couple’s teenage son said: “I feel a little bit about it, because it's not something you want to brag about or put out to the or anything.

“If they found out before they got married I think there'd be something obviously wrong with that but since they found out after there's there's not one single problem.”

None of the couple’s relatives recognised each other at their wedding. Celina and Joseph later discovered that Joe’s grandmother on his father’s side had adopted, and bad record-keeping meant that their family link was missed.

“Colorado seems so big, but it’s really not that big,” Celina says. “Everyone knows everyone, and most likely, everyone is related.”

Nevertheless, the couple even started their own dating platform, called Before We Be which is designed to help prevent people from embarking on a relationship with someone they are related to.