Stephanie + Noah — Portrait of a Young Couple

Stephanie + Noah // Mechanicsburg, Ohio

“We're not coming home! Noah's leg is backwards! I don't know where we're going!”

Stephanie shouted into the receiver and hung up the phone. Sitting next to an ambulance, she’d called Noah’s dad in a panic, not sure of what else to do. A message over the sound system bellowed for someone to bring Noah’s ID and wallet; realizing she had both, Stephanie ran to the emcees.

Around her, the screams had mostly subsided, but Noah’s accident had sent everyone into a jumbled tumult. Paramedics worked to stabilize his condition; event organizers considered calling in a helicopter for medical evacuation; social media combusted with rumors in mere minutes. Close-calls and injuries in the sport were common, but Noah’s accident was grave even by those hazardous standards.

The paramedics soon decided Noah was in stable enough condition to be driven to the hospital. As they wheeled him into the ambulance, they called for Stephanie; she had been the only person to accompany Noah to the event, so it made sense for her to accompany him to the hospital.

20 minutes earlier, Noah had hoped for a good run; maybe he would even set a new record. If not, at least he would get a cool video. Earlier that night, he’d helped a boy put spurs on his boots for the first time, and the boy’s mother asked the film crew to pay special attention to Noah.

A fellow bull rider pulled open the gate:

“One… Two…” So far, so good; Noah was keeping his balance.

“Three… Four…” Halfway there; Noah needed to stay on for at least eight seconds to score.

“Five… Six… Seven… Eight…”

Noah began sliding to the left. He squeezed his right leg, trying to stay balanced, but let go as he fell further, knowing he couldn’t stay on anymore.

Normally, he’d simply fall to the ground, run away, and consider himself lucky not to have been thrown off. Only his right ankle, unexpectedly caught in the tightened loop of the rope stirrup, was stuck. As he fell to the left, the rope came with him, arching over the top of the bull and pulled so tight that Noah didn’t even fully hit the ground before his body jerked upwards again from the force of the animal’s next kick.

For 22 seconds, Noah twisted violently as the bull cast his body like a bob at the end of a fishing line, the rope dragging his right leg first before the rest of his body followed in a terrifyingly inhuman ripple.

First one, then two, then a group of six people ran over to control the animal and pull Noah free. Bull fighters—those who wear brightly colored clothes to lure the bulls and give riders space to escape—usually carried small knives in their boots for these situations, but none had theirs that evening. The other people nearly managed to untie Noah once before the bull turned its body, dragging him in a new direction and knocking everyone else away.

After another desperate attempt, the group of riders succeeded in wrenching Noah free. Seeing him flail had been terrifying; seeing him motionless on the ground was somehow worse. His leg bent backwards at a savage angle, and when someone ripped apart his shirt to check the damage to his upper body, they saw a clear hoof print stamped across his chest. Noah was conscious; for how much longer, no one knew.

In the ambulance, the paramedics tried to make small talk with Stephanie, who responded with neither words nor emotions. She and Noah weren’t even dating yet; the two first met in middle school a decade earlier in 2006, and only recently reconnected at a line-dancing bar in Columbus. Stephanie had just started joining Noah at his weekly bull-riding competitions a few weeks ago.

Not every couple has the misfortune of defining the start of their relationship in such vivid terms, but Stephanie and Noah will be the first to admit to you that had the accident not happened, they probably wouldn’t be together today.

Noah was conscious for all of the accident and subsequent ambulance ride. “I remember when I first came off and realized I was hung up,” he told me, explaining that the spur on his right boot had poked through a braided rope and gotten stuck. “I tried as hard as I could to yank my foot out of my boot, and it didn’t come out. So I just told myself, ‘Here we go!’” The rest of his night was marked by excruciating pain.

Stephanie showed me one of Noah’s X-rays taken right after the accident; I made an effort to show how confused I was, tilting my head, hoping to find direction amid his broken anatomy. “So, this is his femur,” Stephanie said to me, “and it went like this:” She raised her arms, and placed her hands fingertip-to-fingertip to represent Noah’s knee. Then, she twisted, and pushed her hands together. “The calf part rotated, then shifted up, and his kneecap went into his thigh. It was disgusting.”

“Both of our phones were blowing up,” Stephanie continued, “because someone had posted a video on Facebook saying that Noah died. Our phones died soon after.” After she got to the hospital, Stephanie stayed with Noah for as long as she was allowed. “He had to go in for a CT scan,” she said, “so the hospital staff put me in a side room, and just straight up forgot about me. I was in there for, like, an hour.”

Without her phone, and alone with her emotions for the first time that evening, Stephanie broke down. “At this point, I’m finally crying,” she told me. “Someone eventually came in the room to ask why I was there, and I told them it was because no one had told me I could come back out.” She found that Noah’s dad, Brian, and her own parents were already at the hospital, having rushed over after receiving Stephanie’s distressed phone calls.

“The next morning,” Stephanie continued, “Noah was getting ready to go into surgery, and I ended up spending, like, six hours with his dad. By myself.” Brian bought Stephanie lunch. After an awkward silence—their first interaction, during dinner at Brian’s house a few weeks earlier and before Stephanie and Noah were officially dating, had been Brian remarking to Noah, in front of Stephanie, “So, how long is this one going to last?”—they began to talk. “That’s why we got to know each other,” Stephanie said, “because we didn’t really have a choice.”

The surgery was done with what is essentially a medical version of a drill and giant hammer. “It's actually pretty brutal,” Noah said. “They came into my hip and drilled a hollow route through my femur. Then they took this titanium rod and hammered it in.”

*An X-ray of Noah’s leg after the surgery. The screw and rod are the dark areas in the center*

Noah remained in the hospital for a week; Stephanie spent each night there, waking up at 5am to drive back to Columbus for work before returning to visit in the evening. Her parents often joined. “My mom ended up getting really close with him,” Stephanie told me. “She’s always had a sweet spot for him.”

(A few weeks before, Noah had sent flowers to Stephanie for her birthday. “So, when are we going to meet him?” Stephanie’s mom, Vicki, had asked. The week after, she and the rest of Stephanie’s family joined her to watch Noah’s bull-riding at the rodeo; they’d loved it.)

When Noah was discharged from the hospital at the end of the week, Vicki gave him a ride back home. Whitehall, where Noah lived, was only 20 minutes from Westerville, where Stephanie lived. She, along with her mother, continued to visit Noah every day at his house to help him out when his father was away at work.

When the back-and-forth drive became too tedious for Vicki, she decided to just move Noah into her own home so that she and Stephanie could more easily help him. The family was used to taking care of people; Vicki and her husband had raised six kids and a few grandkids, and many people I talked to shared how much they admired Vicki’s generous spirit and caring nature.

*Noah, Vicki, and Stephanie at the wedding*

The two began officially dating after Noah got out of the hospital. Stephanie inherited her mother’s empathy and compassion, but taking care of Noah was still a peculiar experience. “Again, we’d just barely been dating” she said, “and here I was, like, helping him change clothes, or take a shower, or wipe his butt.” I asked what her own feelings were about taking care of Noah, and whether her actions felt like an obligation. “Yes and no,” she replied. “It was definitely something that I wanted to do, but it was also something that I felt I needed to do, because he didn’t really have anyone else to help him the way he needed help, and I was used to my family being the type to do everything to help when we can.”

“He did physical therapy,” Stephanie explained, “and he’s honestly stronger now than he was before, because he has a titanium rod in him.” Noah’s injury, as severe as it was, could’ve also been much worse; he hadn’t hit his femoral artery or any major nerves, and his gait is entirely back to normal today.

*Noah and Stephanie on their wedding day*

Stephanie and Noah shared this story with me a few months before their wedding, explaining that planning a COVID wedding was, literally, not their first rodeo. “We’ve been engaged for nearly three years now,” Stephanie told me, “and we put off the wedding for a long time because they’re just so expensive.”

*Noah and his stepmother setting up DIY lighting inside the farm venue*

At first, the two wanted to save some more money; then, they wanted to wait until Stephanie graduated nursing school in late 2021. Eventually, in early 2020, after two years of already being engaged, they realized they’d always be able to find new reasons to push back the wedding. With some pressure from Noah’s father, a religious man who constantly lamented the fact they were lived together but weren’t married, Stephanie and Noah began to plan.

Stephanie always dreamed of having a farm wedding. “My uncle had a farm,” she told me, “with a giant pasture in the back and two horses, and that was my favorite place to be growing up.” Noah felt similarly, having spent much of his childhood living on a cattle farm in rural Ohio. A friend of Stephanie’s offered a full weekend’s use of her family’s farm in Mechanicsburg, about 45 minutes west of Columbus, for just $600, Noah’s stepmother ran a charity that lent wedding decorations for free, and Stephanie’s parents would help pay for some of the catering. (They also, of course, stumbled upon this project, so they didn’t have to pay for photography.)

*A photo of the farm where Stephanie and Noah held their wedding*

I arrived at their home in Whitehall, a lower-income suburb of Columbus, early in the week before the wedding. Stephanie waved at me from the porch, holding her and Noah’s son, Kashtyn, in her arms; I learned the house was where Noah spent his early childhood.

“My dad is very religious,” Noah told me, “and he ran a faith-based ministry for people coming out of homelessness and addiction.” The house served as a stepping stone for those in recovery, a place for someone to gain their worldly bearings before going on to live a fully independent life. Some were more successful at staying sober than others, and though Noah didn’t describe his childhood as traumatic, I wondered if that was because more recent traumas masked earlier ones. “I don’t want to scare you or anything,” he told me soon after I arrived, “but I’ve actually seen a couple of people pass away here in this house.” I looked at Kashtyn, who ran happily through the hallway; if he wasn’t scared, then I figured I wouldn’t be, either.

When Noah was eight years old, his parents got divorced; Noah’s father stayed in the ministry home, while his mother moved just down the street. “For a few years,” Noah shared, “I would literally just walk back and forth between the houses, and be wherever I wanted to be. But then eventually they started fighting for custody over me.” Noah conceded that his memory about the details wasn’t great; he just remembers his mom moving further away, and then having to follow a schedule for visits. “I was back and forth; one week here, one week there, two weeks here, two weeks there, and so on,” he told me.

A particular few days, however, stand out to Noah. “My mom was still in the custody battle with my dad and she wasn’t supposed to take me out of state,” he shared, “but she did when she got a new job in Florida.” Noah vividly remembers not wanting to leave and begging her to leave him at his dad’s. “I was young, but I knew what was going on, and I felt I was being taken against my will,” he said.

Noah once described his younger self as being a “momma’s boy,” so his resistance at the time seemed to be less a function of his relationship with his mom and more because he was simply scared to leave home in Ohio.

*Noah’s mother embracing him after their mother-son dance*

When he arrived in Florida, Noah locked himself in his room. “I did not want to be there, and I was scared,” he told me. “But then after a few days, my dad called me, and said, ‘I'll be there to get you.’”

A few hours later, Noah’s dad showed up, accompanied by more than a few police cars. “It was a mess that day,” Noah recalled, “with a lot of fighting and yelling, going to the court system down there and getting all the paperwork needed. But, ultimately, my mom broke the court order, and my dad brought me home.”

Since then, Noah’s been closer with his father, both physically (by being in Ohio) and emotionally. “My dad spending all that money to come down and get me made me gravitate towards him,” Noah told me. He and his father moved to a more rural part of Ohio soon after, and Noah’s middle and high school years were dominated by wrestling, something his father had also done in his youth and which he encouraged Noah to try. “I loved it,” Noah said. “I lived and breathed it, and traveled to places like Florida, Michigan, even almost Australia one time.”

Noah excelled, and his father decided a few years later that he should move from their rural home to somewhere closer to Columbus where he’d have more competition. “Wrestling teaches discipline and respect,” Noah said. “It's a one-on-one score. It's you and another man, or woman nowadays, and that’s it.” Noah credits much of his tough exterior but soft interior to the sport. “I have a huge heart,” he told me, “but I also have a tough side of me that I really take pride in.”

A tough side, he later realized in his relationship with Stephanie, that could cause problems if he wasn’t careful.

The trauma of Noah breaking his leg and the following period of care had been enough to bring him and Stephanie together; whether it would be enough to keep them together was an entirely different matter.

Noah and Stephanie were both young—20 years old—when they reconnected, and neither had been in many healthy relationships before. Both held their share of personal issues to work through, but most prominent in the beginning of the relationship were Noah’s insecurities and the personality traits he displayed as a result of them.

Noah, himself, acknowledged as much. “I was pretty controlling,” he said to me, “and it took a lot to really come out of that phase.” Stephanie’s own siblings and father picked up on the behavior early in the relationship, too. “His personality has changed immensely,” Stephanie prefaced, “but my siblings—and there's a ton of them—were not a fan of him in the beginning. My family all thought he was crazy, and they were worried for me.”

As open as people are for this project, it’s still rare for someone to fully admit to and share about the uglier sides of whom they used to be; I was grateful to Noah for being vulnerable with me, and when I asked whether he knew the roots of his behavior, he had no definitive answer but did have guesses in the form of stories.

“My dad is a Proverbs 31 kind of guy,” Noah began, referring to a chapter in the Bible oft-quoted as justification for asking Christian women to be fully subservient to their husbands. “When it comes to life, he likes for a wife to cook, clean, and take care of the household while he's out making money.”

“I don’t particularly agree with Proverbs 31,” Noah continued. “If you want to do that in a relationship, fine.” Noah tilted his head towards Stephanie and chuckled. “But she is definitely not a Proverbs 31 kind of woman,” to which Stephanie laughed back knowingly in the way you might about a topic long argued over before. “But I was raised by my dad directing me saying ‘hey, if you find a good woman, this is how she’s going to be.’”

He prefaced his next words. “It’s hard to explain this story, because when I word it, it's gonna sound like I'm making it her fault when that’s not really what I’m trying to say. I’m grateful she’s still with me after it.”

Towards the beginning of his and Stephanie’s relationship, Stephanie decided to go to a Justin Bieber concert with her friends. “Her words to me,” Noah said, “were: ‘When I get out of here, or wherever I'm going or whatever I'm doing, I'll call you to let you know.’” Noah is a scheduled person: "If you tell me something is gonna happen at a certain time, then that’s how it’s gonna go down in my mind,” he said.

Stephanie ended up turning her phone off, and never called Noah. “It started off where I was really worried,” Noah said, “thinking, okay, she’s supposed to be home by now. But then as the time went on, and I knew that this was one of those things where it was BS; I knew she was elsewhere. And I think that was when the part came in of ‘Oh, what if she's with somebody else? What if her time is no longer mine?’”

Noah spent the rest of the night calling everywhere he could to find where Stephanie was; bars, her family, restaurants; anything short of physically going out to track her down. When he eventually did get a hold of her, it was in a frightful over-the-phone rage.

Noah looked away from me for a few seconds and paused in thought before continuing. “I don't like… deep down… I don't know where that comes from. Insecurity was a big part of it, I think. I knew that I wanted to be with her, but I wasn’t 100% sure that she also wanted to be with me.”

Noah’s mind returned to childhood. He shared about seeing his father’s particularly bad marriage. “After my dad split up with my mom, he remarried, and I'm not kidding you, the day after they got married, she was a completely different person. 180 degree flip.” Where she used to be kind to Noah and his father, offering them lots of attention and gifts, now she completely ignored them, or worse. “I remember two years, around Thanksgiving, when she actually kicked me and my dad out of the house. So we had Subway both those years.”

“I wonder if those events were what changed me,” he mused, “where a place I thought was so warm, and thought was home, where I thought I could trust; when that was thrown out the window, if it caused me to doubt that feeling in the future.”

We had this conversation one day in Stephanie’s car while running errands and picking up one of their friends’ kids from school; Stephanie had gotten out to play with Kashtyn and wait for the bus outside. “Her mom,” Noah said, looking towards Stephanie, “runs a grief recovery class in Columbus for people who have lost someone, or who have just been through anything traumatic, and she’s begged me to do it. It’d allow me to dive into my childhood and say, ‘okay, this thing happened, but I have to learn how not to let that affect me long-term.’”

He said he wasn’t opposed to doing the class. “But sometimes,” he qualified, “I also wonder, well, do I even want to dive back into that? Because as far as the jealousy, being controlling; that’s gone now.” I’d talked to him and Stephanie individually on many prior occasions, and both agreed that Noah’s personality had changed significantly since those early days in their relationship.

*Stephanie and Noah on their wedding day*

I asked to what he traced the change; had it been something changing within himself or an external, environmental factor? And if the latter, did he worry about that side of him coming out again if those factors changed?

“That's why part of me wants to still kind of explore that,” he answered, adding that he sees where it could be useful to have a better understanding of his own story and how it affects his way of thinking today.

Noah couldn’t pinpoint the exact origins of his past behaviors, but his actions nevertheless prove Stephanie’s assertions about how he’s changed for the better.

*Stephanie and Noah recessing after their ceremony*

Noah caught a mild case of COVID from his workplace at the beginning of the pandemic, and his recovery and quarantine coincided with Stephanie’s birthday. “He talked to all of my family, all of my siblings,” Stephanie told me, “and set up a birthday parade for me outside our home, since I was taking care of Noah and quarantining as well. He can reach out and talk to them now without me being there too, and if you told me he’d be able to do that a few years ago, I wouldn’t have believed you.”

Stephanie, for her part, readily admitted her own faults from that time, too. “We’ve both grown up a lot together,” she said. “I’d never been in a good relationship, and so I didn’t know what a good relationship looked like. I’ve grown so much in communication. I used to be someone to shut down or run away from all of my problems, and that was one of the biggest problems with our relationship, because I would never want to talk about things right then and there. He had to learn to be patient with me, and I had to learn I can’t just ignore things because they’re not going to go away.”

She looked towards Kashtyn, who lay asleep in Noah’s arms. “And of course with him, the biggest thing is literally having to put someone before you. We didn’t really have any responsibilities when we first started dating. We just went to concerts, music festivals, bars all the time. And now, we don’t really do any of that anymore.”

(A friend of Noah’s also described Stephanie to me as being “snooty” back then, which I found hard to reconcile with the personality I saw, full of boundless warmth and genuine care.)

People often ask if I’m ever nervous to stay in couples’ homes, and I reply that even if I were, they’d probably be just as nervous for me to be in their homes. The experience is surprisingly natural, and what I liken to “friendship in reverse.” Most friendships begin with two people spending time or experiencing things together—school, parties, concerts, dinners—and progress over many months or years as they get to know each other more deeply. They begin to see each others’ best and worst moments, and learn more about each others’ delights or traumas.

But with the couples I meet through Portrait of a Young Couple, that process is reversed. Before even agreeing to photograph their weddings, I make it very clear to couples that they should be prepared to share about not just the happier times in their relationships and lives, but also the harder and more traumatic periods; it’s the only way to achieve the depth I want this project to have.

We’ll do hours of video calls together; I’ll talk to some of their friends and family over the phone; they’ll read my own story and I’ll answer anything they’re curious about. By the time we meet in-person, our friendship no longer feels brand new.

*Noah, Kashtyn, and Stephanie after an ice cream run*

That’s not to say, of course, that every experience is the same, or that every couple I stay with feels equally the same. To assume that would be to suggest either that everyone has an identical personality, or that I’m a perfect social chameleon, both of which are unsettling to think about.

Connecting with anyone, on some level, is possible given the right context; this project proves that a couple’s wedding is a pretty great one. But I do experience more context with some couples than others. Perhaps we share similar ethnic backgrounds or educational upbringings; maybe we play the same instruments, or grew up with similar parents.

Stephanie, Noah, and I have experienced life in ways more different than similar. I grew up an only child of immigrant parents, while they grew up with siblings and parents for whom the US is the only history they know. I worked my first real job only after college, while they started back in high school. I see travel as something I’ve done plenty of in the past, while they see it as something to do plenty more of in the future.

But something I found surprisingly bonding was the fact that we were all almost exactly the same age; our birthdays are only a month apart. Something about that knowledge, recalled while comparing how differently our lives have unfolded, was as profound as it was charming. (Most prominently, Stephanie and Noah being so fulfilled raising 2 1/2 year old Kashtyn and getting married, and me, also being incredibly fulfilled, but comically single and with no prospects.)

I thought of all of this in our time together, sharing and comparing memories about what we were each doing at any given age; how we thought about the future; what we loved and what we feared.

Noah was on a final night shift for his job as a corrections officer when I arrived. We met the next morning after a checkup with his GI doctor. “They didn't see anything in my endoscopy this morning,” he told me afterwards, “but if it gets to be point where my doctor says, honestly, I think it's because you're on third shift that your body's not digesting right, then of course family and health will come first.” His experience being on night shift and the doctor’s visit felt totally foreign to me, as I’d assume my experiences from Princeton or working as an engineer felt foreign to him and Stephanie. And still, we could connect over our simple curiosity towards each others’ lives.

Stephanie and Noah showed me around their hometown of Columbus throughout our week together. One day, we went on a small photoshoot downtown, all three of them donning Blue Jackets (the NHL team) jerseys. They told me that they usually had season tickets, but obviously couldn’t go to any games this year with the pandemic.

*Stephanie, Noah, and Kashtyn in their Blue Jackets jerseys*

Another afternoon, Noah brought me to a famous local destination, the Haunted Hoochie, a haunted house that for decades has pioneered the use of new technology and tactics to scare the shit out of anyone willing to pay for such a privilege; he and Stephanie used to work there for fun during nights and weekends, jumping out of windows covered in bloody makeup and bearing vicious expressions.

Kashtyn, understandably, tucked his head into Noah’s shoulder most of the time, though he made occasional glances at the array of freaky animatronics or statues.

Disclaimer sign outside the Haunted Hoochie — *Disclaimer sign outside the* *Haunted Hoochie*

(I’m really bad with horror and was impressed with how Kashtyn seemed more curious than scared; only a few of the stunts were even set up, while work lights illuminated most of the path, and still my heart beat uncomfortably fast.)

*Noah explaining how some of the animatronics in the Haunted Hoochie worked*

As we drove around town, Noah and Stephanie regularly played hour after hour of local country music stations in their car. I’d never really taken a liking to country music before, and neither Noah nor Stephanie are even particularly “country” in their personalities—they each claim mild Midwestern accents, with vowels that stretch like the cornfields around—but I began to feel more of the appeal by the end of our week together.

Here, in the heart of the Midwest, as we all sat around a fire pit in Noah and Stephanie’s backyard one night with cans of some light beer I can’t remember the name of, and stories about work or school or friends and family who weren’t doing too well, lyrics that’d I’d always dismissed as being about stereotypical or superficial topics—exes, beer, trucks, open land—suddenly sang to a more familiar and complex tune of loss, nostalgia, contentment, and appreciation for small things.

*Noah, Stephanie, and a few of their friends sitting around their backyard firepit*

One evening, one of Noah’s groomsmen came over while Noah, Stephanie and I watched Hamilton on Disney+. Stephanie and I loved it, Noah liked it, and his groomsman watched for a few seconds before asking, “What the fuck kind of hippie-ass shit is this?”

We tried explaining the appeal, something that I, at least, had taken for granted; everyone loves Hamilton, right? The groomsman shook his head, not really understanding. “I’m on the wrong side of the country to be enjoying all this shit.”

He’d just come back from a many hours-long hunting expedition, and when I asked about some of what it’d been like—I’ve never hunted before—Noah showed me some of his collection of guns and scopes, taking the time to point out a bunch of mechanisms I might appreciate as an engineer, and reflecting on how gun education and appreciation is something he wished more people around the country understood. I asked what hunting was like for him, having seen a few Facebook posts he’d made in the past. He admitted that the first time he killed a deer it “tore him up,” but that he always made the most of it by having everything properly cleaned and butchered afterwards.

I made sure, too, that it wasn’t just me experiencing something new. I’ve made it a bit of a personal tradition to cook Taiwanese Beef Noodle soup for couples I stay with, both so I can share a bit about my own culture and so I can simply do something nice for the couple who’ve already been so gracious in welcoming me to their homes. I hadn’t expected Kashtyn to like it—most kids who’ve tried the soup for the first time are surprised by the stronger, perhaps unfamiliar spices of anise, cloves, and ginger—but he happily slurped spoonfuls of the broth and noodles.

*Stephanie feeding a small bite of the beef noodle soup I made to Kashtyn*

We talked politics—how could we not? This was a few months before the 2020 presidential election—and often disagreed, but only after already having a foundation of investment into each others’ lives, communities, and values.

We talked engineering; Noah puts up an arguably immoderate Christmas light display each year—to Stephanie’s annual chagrin—and he showed me the circuit on the control box while I explained the function of the different components on the circuit board or talked through some of the software. “Everything is literally a foreign language,” Noah said to me.

We laughed, savoring the feeling of both finding something thrilling, yet for entirely different reasons, and had, simply, a wonderful time in each others’ company.

I once commented to Stephanie that I hoped I wasn’t a burden on the two of them, having to think about not just wedding planning but also being a good host to me. “Oh, don’t worry,” she replied, waving off my concerns. “Noah and I obviously already talk all the time, and then with him,” she looked towards Kashtyn, who watched a TV show in the living room, “if he's talking, and Noah and I are talking, he just gets louder and louder until we acknowledge him.” Kashtyn seemed to be shier about raising his voice when I was around. Stephanie smiled and let out a small sigh. “It’s honestly kinda nice to have another adult in the house.”

*Stephanie pushing a very pleased Kashtyn on a tire-swing in the backyard; Noah is in the background to the right harvesting some peppers from the garden*

Noah and Stephanie both credited Stephanie’s mother, Vicki, for giving them the initial strength to stay together, but someone else has provided that strength in more recent years: their son, Kashtyn.

*Noah and Stephanie with Kashtyn on their wedding day*

“Noah’s accident and Kashtyn being born are easily the two scariest moments in my entire life,” Stephanie told me, “And if it wasn’t for Kashtyn, I’m also not sure we'd still be together. Not because we only want to stay together for Kashtyn, but because he’s what helped solidify the strength that we needed in our relationship.”

In April of 2017, around a year after Noah’s bull-riding accident, Stephanie learned she was pregnant. “When I found out, I took, like, 12 pregnancy tests,” she told me, “but I didn't believe any of them. I thought I was going to be disowned. How is everyone gonna react to this? Is everyone gonna be mad at us? I was sobbing in the car, terrified.”

It’s somewhat ironic, or fateful, to note that Stephanie herself, the sixth and final child to her parents, was also an accident. “I’m six years younger than my next youngest brother,” she told me, “and by the time I was 20, the oldest was already in his late 30s.”

Stephanie grew up around a large and busy family, and lived her whole life in the same home in Westerville. “When people talk about the nice places of Columbus,” she told me, “they usually talk about Upper Arlington, Worthington, New Albany, and Westerville.” Her lifestyle was suburban and stable, though also chaotic at times with all of the kids.

Many of Stephanie’s early childhood memories are of being taken to her siblings’ various activities. “My job was to go to all of my siblings’ soccer tournaments,” she said, “and I just kind of went everywhere they did.” She’d occasionally travel with them to out-of-state tournaments. “We would go to Florida to watch my older brothers play soccer, and I’d look forward to that all year, because those were our family vacations.”

Stephanie’s parents eventually sent her to her own activity: dance. “I started in little ballet, tap-dance, and jazz classes,” she shared, “and then when I was nine, my parents let me compete with my dance studio.” If Noah had wrestling, then Stephanie had dance, and she spent all of her time on it.

She recalled how low she felt after breaking her foot in eighth grade. “They were stress fractures,” she described, “and I just landed on it one week and every bone, straight across, just snapped. It was horrendous. And of course, I was an overdramatic teen, thinking it was the end of the world.”

Two years later, Stephanie’s foot had healed, but the confidence she’d lost in that time, and the belief that she couldn’t catch up to her peers, kept her from dancing again. But an old instructor coaxed her to audition for the school’s rendition of Annie, and Stephanie soon found that her doubts and insecurities were unfounded. “I feel like all of this is important to share,” she said, “because a lot of times when people lose something they love, they start getting into things that they shouldn't be doing.”

Many of the details of what she meant are more private, but the general picture is that many of Stephanie’s own friends, and some family, became caught in the world of addiction and crime. Dance, she said, kept her away from much of that. “By the end of high school,” she told me, “I was dancing four to five days a week, and would leave school, go straight to the dance studio and be there until nine o'clock at night. I absolutely loved it, to be back with people that I loved, doing what I loved.”

Stephanie graduated from high school and decided to attend Ohio State on scholarships; the rest of her siblings had attended Otterbein, the local university in Westerville, a decision her father explained to me as her “wanting to be different” and liking the idea of being accepted to the main campus of a large university.

“I did not stick with college,” Stephanie told me. “I wasn't in a good place, and I just was not motivated to do anything.” She’d started school with plans to become a special needs teacher, in large part because her mother was one, but quickly realized it wasn’t for her. “I loved the kids, and loved special needs, but all of the standardized testing made me feel like, you can't win with any of this,” she told me.

Stephanie was also in a bad relationship, and adamant about staying away from alcohol and drugs due to what she’d seen them do to her friends and family. “I never was interested in all that stuff,” she told me, “but I lived in an environment where that's what everyone wanted to do, having just graduated high school. So I literally lived in a basement, because everyone else would be upstairs smoking or doing whatever they wanted.”

Her feelings about the bad relationship solidified then, too. “The apartment next to ours caught on fire,” she recalled, “and we had to get everything out. Ours didn’t end up catching on fire, but I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, I could have lost literally everything.’ And the next day, the person I was dating was only worried about how he was going to buy more weed.”

Stephanie moved out after that, and dropped out of college during her sophomore year to move home and spend some time figuring out what, in fact, she wanted to do. “My parents were happy to have me home, and supportive that I was trying to figure out what I should be doing.” Stephanie and Noah reconnected a few months after she moved home.

A year later, when Stephanie found out she was pregnant, it turned out she had no reason to worry about her family’s reactions. “I grew up around kids with my family,” she said, noting her nieces from her older brother’s past relationships, “and so I knew I was gonna have help and support. I just didn’t know how everyone would react.”

One of Stephanie’s brothers had been first to respond to the news of her pregnancy. “He ended up texting me after I got home,” Stephanie said, “with a super long text message that was like, ‘Our kids are going to get to grow up together; we’re going to be able to do this, and we’ll be here through it all.’”

Stephanie sniffled and wiped her eyes a few times. “I definitely had a sigh of relief.” She got a similar reaction from her dad. “When I got home and talked to him, he was amazing about it, and just said ‘I guess we just have to turn that extra bedroom into a nursery!’”

“And my mom,” Stephanie concluded, “was honestly just excited, because that's my mom.”

*Stephanie and Noah with their families*

Noah proposed a few months later, towards the end of Stephanie’s pregnancy. “He called my obstetrician’s office before I went in for one of my last ultrasounds,” Stephanie said, “and he set this up with my dad and my mom; my siblings all knew, too, but I had no idea, obviously, because I would’ve looked way better had I known it was coming.”

Stephanie was, in her words, “a very large whale, a hot mess, and real pregnant.” Her obstetrician showed Stephanie the ultrasound and, with Noah and her parents in the room, typed out, “Mommy, will you marry daddy?” Through Stephanie’s tears and disbelief, Noah pulled out a ring.

Stephanie’s pregnancy went smoothly; no complications, and not much pain. Kashtyn’s birth, though, wasn’t so easy. "I can remember it vividly,” Stephanie began. “It was on Thursday night. Noah was coaching wrestling, and I started having contractions. It was still a week before Kashtyn was due, so I wasn’t sure if they were real, but I also, like, had no idea what to expect.”

Stephanie’s mom decided she might just be nervous, so she and Stephanie drove to watch Noah coach. “The kids loved him, so my mom loved it, too,” Stephanie said. They weren’t at the practice for very long before Stephanie began feeling sicker; she and her mom bought some food, drove back home, and when Noah came back, Stephanie told everyone, “We gotta go. Now.”

At the hospital, Stephanie confirmed she was in labor, but not far enough in labor. “It’s midnight, and I’m like, half a centimeter dilated away from them being able to admit me,” Stephanie said, “so they told me to go home.” As they left, a nurse commented that she’d probably see her again before her shift ended in the morning. “I was SO mad,” Stephanie said, exasperated. “Like, why would you even tell me that??”

The nurse was right. “At home, I started getting sicker, and I thought I couldn’t do this anymore. My poor niece was studying for a Spanish exam the next day, and I was just screaming my head off in the bathroom.”

Being back at the hospital was only the start of Stephanie’s pain. “When I arrived, I was so dehydrated that they couldn't get an IV in me, and then I couldn't have my epidural until they got my IV, and then I was in labor for, like, 12 hours.”

“Everything was fine,” Stephanie continued, glossing over all the prior pain that had clearly not been fine, “until they broke my water, and found meconium in the fluid, meaning he’d had a bowel movement.” If a baby takes its first breath and accidentally breathes in this meconium-laced fluid, its lungs can lose their ability to take in oxygen and the baby may experience brain damage. The hospital staff called the NICU team for standby in case this happened to Kashtyn.

After Stephanie gave birth, things appeared okay for a few minutes before Kashtyn’s vitals suddenly began to drop. “They couldn't get his oxygen up,” Stephanie told me, “and of course, I'm freaking out, because I can't move, and I had no idea what was happening. Noah’s freaking out too, but trying to pretend things are fine because he doesn’t want to freak me out even more.”

The NICU team—a nurse practitioner, charge nurse, and neonatologist—wheeled Kashtyn away. “I told Noah to go with them,” Stephanie said, “so Kashtyn wouldn’t be alone. All of our families were in the waiting room, excited to be able to see Kashtyn, and then everything just turned bad.”

The neonatologist returned to Stephanie’s room. “I need you to sign these blood consent forms, right now,” she told Stephanie, who promptly obliged. Noah told Stephanie that when they went to intubate Kashtyn, they put the tube down his throat, and blood came up. His lungs were hemorrhaging, and IV pricks they administered didn’t work, either; it appeared that he had a rare bleeding disorder.

The nurses were able to stabilize Kashtyn’s condition after a few hours, but he still appeared to be far from safe. “He was on a ventilator,” Stephanie said, “and it was like a smack in the face, because everything leading up to that point had been fine. But he ended up just taking his first breath at the wrong time, and swallowed all that fluid.”

*Stephanie and Noah seeing an intubated Kashtyn for the first time*

Kashtyn stayed in the NICU for a week, during which time Stephanie described two versions of grief: grief of the fear that they might lose him (she found out later Kashtyn probably had a 50% chance of survival) and grief of losing the whole newborn experience. “It was flu season, so no one else got to see him,” she told me, “and even though he was full-term and the biggest baby in there, he was the sickest.” Stephanie was allowed to stay in the hospital an extra day, but for the rest of the week came at 6am and left at midnight, with Noah and various other family members keeping her company throughout.

Stephanie paused in her story as a present-day 2 1/2 year old Kashtyn, sensing that someone was talking about him, waddled over. He said something that was gibberish to me but which gave Stephanie a broad grin. “Yes, we’re talking about you,” she said, picking him up and giving him a kiss, “because you’re crazy and you just want to cause all the problems, don’t you?” Kashtyn giggled. I wondered about the day when he might read his parents’ story and truly understand how scared they were.

*Kashtyn in front of his mother’s wedding dress*

Each day after Kashtyn was born, Stephanie worked to pump enough breastmilk so he wouldn’t have to go on any supplements. Each night, she had to be dragged out of the hospital, not wanting to leave. “He was two days old, and I hadn’t been able to really hold him yet, and because he was intubated they didn’t want his heart rate to go up and struggle to breath even more,” she said.

But on day three, a nurse came up to Stephanie and asked, “So, do you want to hold him?” “I was in shock,” Stephanie said, “and couldn’t form words, but Noah spoke for me and said, ‘Yes, yes she does.’ ” Stephanie rushed to take a shower and clean her hands.

“It took so long for me to be able to hold him,” she said, “and they had to have a whole team of nurses present just to lift him out of the crib and put him into my arms.” Noah got to hold him the next day, repeating the same procedure. “Those are some of the best pictures that we have,” she said, “because you can just see so much emotion.”

By day six, Kashtyn was doing much better; he’d been taken off the ventilator and was almost ready to be taken home. “They finally dressed him up in his first little outfit that we brought him, this cute little dog outfit,” Stephanie said, “and they said we could take him home, which was crazy, because even the nurses said they wouldn’t have imagined that could happen in a week because of how sick he was.”

Stephanie and Noah stocked up on gloves and hand sanitizer before bringing Kashtyn home. “I was so scared he was gonna get sick again,” Stephanie said, “and we literally did not leave his bedroom. Noah was such a rock, because he was trying his hardest to not freak out for my sake.”

“People often talk about the newborn phase being bad, but I would take the newborn phase any day over a moving, crawling, six-month-old baby who doesn’t understand you yet,” Stephanie shared with me when I asked about what learning to be a parent was like. Noah added, “Man, if you would have asked us a couple years ago whether we would have been married with kids, we probably would have laughed in your face. It made us grow up.”

“Stephanie is a phenomenal mother, like, a Mother Nature type of mother,” Christina, Noah’s stepmother, told me once, something I could easily see as Stephanie entertained or fed or played with Kashtyn. She’d help him on steps at the park; push him on a tire swing in her backyard; just respond to him at times with equal parts care and exhaustion.

*Stephanie helping Kashtyn across a bridge at a local park*

Once, as Stephanie and I prepared dinner, Kashtyn walked into the kitchen, and announced, “I’ve gotta poop!” “Great.” Stephanie responded, not looking up from prepping and heating up a tray of food. “And pee,” Kashtyn added. “Fantastic.” Stephanie deadpanned in response. A few moments later, she turned to help him to the bathroom.

Later, when Kashtyn was already put to bed, Stephanie commented to me, “I wish I could see the world through his eyes sometimes, just because it's such a different life. Such a different mentality, not realizing what’s going on in the world.” I admitted I felt a bit jealous of his ignorance. “He always wants to know where things are in a city,” Stephanie said another time as we ran errands, Kashtyn sitting next to her while Noah drove, looking around and asking an incessant stream of questions. “He’ll ask about all the street names and stuff,” Noah added. “Not that he knows what any of it means.”

The more time I’ve spent around kids during this project, the more I’ve picked up on how intangible the miracle of their existence and growth is. At dinner one evening, Stephanie suddenly gasped. “He just rolled his eyes at me!” she scoffed with a smile. Kashtyn giggled in response, his face encrusted with his food. “He’s never done that before. Now where did he pick that up?” She side-eyed Noah, who shook his head in half-hearted ignorance.

Stephanie’s love for taking care of people didn’t begin with Kashtyn, but having him, and seeing him recover in the NICU, certainly solidified her career path. She began working at the hospital as soon as she could. “One of my best friends told me she could get me a job at the hospital as a PSA, or Patient Support Assistant, and I could do basically everything except give meds: help with dressing changes, take vitals, empty drains; I did a lot.”

I voiced my surprise that she’d been able to do all of this without any related formal education. Stephanie replied it was mostly on-the-job training. “I went through three weeks of training with them, and didn’t need any specific education,” she told me, stressing though that, of course, there was still a lot of tasks reserved for the CNA’s (Certified Nursing Assistant) or RN’s (Registered Nurses).

She primarily helped with the Surgical Trauma ICU patients, a step-down from the emergency room. What others found gross about human anatomy—broken bones, exposed flesh, and blood everywhere—Stephanie found to be fascinating. “I loved it,” she commented, “but it was a high burnout work environment; lots of car accidents and old people falling and seeing all kinds of horrible injuries.”

The work afforded her an exposure to a wide range of people. “Every kind of person gets sick or injured,” she told me. “I’ve worked with people from so many different cultures.” One that stood out was an Amish family whom she had to help too use the technology in the room, like the phones. “She brought a sewing machine into the baby’s room, and was just making clothes for her whole family there.”

As much as she learned with the STICU teams, Stephanie’s heart was always with the NICU and the babies and she applied for a position as soon as one opened there. She’s loved it ever since, despite the difficulties the work presents. “There are horrible parts of it, of course,” she confessed. “Babies that are super sick, born addicted to drugs and need a morphine drip; tiny babies that are born at 23 weeks; but you also get to see these babies grow to be so cute, and have chubby cheeks and be healthy. It’s lots of miracles, honestly.”

As she began to understand the details of Kashtyn’s situation when he was born, she realized how good of hands he’d truly been in. We often had these conversations about Kashtyn as he tottered around us at home. “He’s still very small,” Stephanie said, looking towards Kashtyn, “but, I mean, we're both not very big,” looking now towards Noah. “My nephew is like a year younger than him and still a giant head taller.”

“It’s funny how we’ve talked to him about the wedding,” she continued. “We tried to explain to him that it’s like a party, but at first, he asked if that meant I was gonna marry him.” Kashtyn usually accompanied us on errands, and I often felt moments of wonder for the future, knowing I’d stay friends with Stephanie and Noah and thus see Kashtyn grow in the coming years.

“We’re in a very different place in life compared to most of our friends,” Noah said to me. “A lot of them are still going out, doing whatever they want, while we’ve got a kid, and are getting married. But this is what we want to do, and where we want to be.”

Noah had always been an outgoing person, making lots of friends and getting into a fair bit of trouble ever since he was a teenager. “He had a lot more freedom than I did growing up,” Stephanie commented. “I was very sheltered like, going to dance class and then coming home, where he had a lot more freedom to just go out and hang out with his friends.”

“But even so, he’s always put us first,” she continued. “Noah works so hard, and he’s always doing it. The only time he didn't work is when he was literally bedridden. I think anybody would be lucky to have that as a quality in their partner.” It was a sentiment I’d heard from his family and friends; “Noah has skin the color of the American flag,” his stepmother told me. “He stands for freedom, and human rights, and animal rights, and he’s not afraid to drop everything to come to the rescue.” One of his groomsmen, Preston, told me, “Noah’s a super loyal, and reliable person; if you need something, he’s gonna be there for you.”

*Stephanie and Noah sharing their first dance*

Stephanie smiled. “And, I mean, how many other 24-year-old guys want to stay home all the time and go to bed at nine o’clock, and change poopy diapers?” I confessed that, as a fellow 24-year-old, that didn’t sound appealing to me in the slightest.

“We both have the same ideas of what we want,” Noah followed. “We’re very lucky with the house that we live in, but we wish we could just pick it up and move it to somewhere with a little more land. We don't want something huge, but we’ve also talked about siblings for Kashtyn, and would love for them to have some land to run around on and maybe some animals.”

“Both of us were raised in the church, but for a while neither of us have been super religious,” Stephanie said. “I kind of fell out of it, and he kind of fell out of it, and a lot of the things that we went through made us feel almost angry, like everything was targeting us, all of these loads coming to us; you get hurt; you lose your job; now I'm pregnant; now our baby is almost dying; things like that.”

“All these bad things kept happening,” she continued, “but then I also look back, and it's like, look how much stronger we are because of them.” Noah voiced a similar sentiment to me. “I think everything we went through and literally going through hell has made us where we are today,” he said. “We're not perfect, but we're strong, and we’ve been through a lot where many other relationships probably would’ve just called it quits.”

Stephanie is currently attending a three-year nursing school to get her Bachelor’s degree and be qualified to handle more responsibilities in the NICU. (She’ll also be paid almost double what she currently makes.) Noah, who after high school went into the Army and then the National Guard, wanted to be a police officer for a while, but put that on hold when an assignment to Florida didn’t work out; he currently works as a corrections officer, and hopes to someday merge a career in law enforcement with his love of dogs. “I want to be a canine handler, ultimately,” he told me, “no matter where I go, or what I do. So whether that's getting, like, a master training certificate and training police dogs, or something else, I want to be doing it. The Department of Corrections has a couple of narcotics dogs and teams. They’re very far and few between, but someone’s gotta do it, and it may as well be me.”

“At the end of the day,” he continued, “I’d like to work with dogs, somehow, to pay the bills, since I’m already doing it on the side but it’s not making me any money.” He looked towards Stephanie and smirked. “I can’t wait for big money over here to graduate and start earning a lot more. We’re most excited to just be able to finally find a plot of land we like and get Kashtyn working with animals.”

I could already picture the way they’d eventually play with their kids, with cows or horses or chickens as their background. For the moment, though, they were focused on making it through the pandemic, making it through school, and, of course, making it through the wedding.

Much of what made Stephanie and Noah’s wedding special, to me, is best described in smaller observations and quotes:

“I'm very wary of ever asking my parents for help paying for the wedding,” Stephanie told me a few months before, “So I’m trying to cut out as much as I possibly can, because I don’t want to take anything more when my parents have already been giving me and my siblings so much from when we were younger.”

“They were literally always working so that we could do whatever we wanted to do. If we needed something, they were gonna do it regardless of anything else.”

*Stephanie’s mom and dad dancing together at the wedding*

“Lots of our guests are gonna be opposites,” Stephanie told me. “My friends are pretty different from Noah’s. They’re probably gonna show up and be like, ‘wut.’”

“We speak cursive here,” one of Noah’s groomsmen laughed to me; his Midwestern accent was sturdier than both Noah and Stephanie’s.

*Stephanie and Noah’s bridesmaids and groomsmen*

“We’ve invited the same people as if it weren’t COVID,” Noah told me, “and we’re doing the ceremony outdoors, and the building is open-air for lots of circulation.” If anyone didn’t feel comfortable coming to the wedding or preferred to only stay for the ceremony, he and Stephanie understood; but after making it as safe as they could for everyone who did accept the risk of attending, they wanted their wedding to still be fun and memorable.

*A group picture of those at Stephanie and Noah’s wedding*

“I’m making this sign for Kashtyn to hold as he comes down the aisle,” Stephanie showed me. It said, “Daddy, here comes mommy!”

*Stephanie painting the sign Kashtyn would walk down the aisle with while he played next to her*

Kashtyn’s walk down the aisle took the longest of anyone in the wedding party; his older cousin had to pull him along as he stopped every few feet, not particularly interested in walking any further. He wore a replica of his father’s outfit: boots, jeans, and a leather vest.

*Kashtyn begrudgingly walking down the aisle*

Few people wore suits; cowboy boots and denim were more the uniform, or light summer sundresses. Noah and Kashtyn had matching outfits, and Stephanie’s leather sandals were custom-made in Texas.

*Noah’s father and stepmother processing down the aisle together*

“This is probably the only time you’ve seen a bride getting ready in an RV, huh?” Stephanie joked with me. She and her bridesmaids had stayed in a hotel the evening before, but because of how rural the farm was, and because it didn’t have any space resembling a bridal suite, she and Noah decided to rent an RV for the day and night for her to get ready in and them to stay in that evening.

*Stephanie (center) and her bridesmaids doing one another’s hair*

(A few members of the wedding party also passed out in it by the end of the evening.)

*One of Noah’s groomsmen passed out in the RV at the end of the wedding*

“This is a dairy farm,” Stephanie explained to me the previous day as we helped prep the venue, “and the cows are right behind where we’re going to get married. I hope they moo during it!” On the road next to the farm, tractors passed us intermittently, their drivers giving a nod and wave if you acknowledged them.

*Stephanie, Noah, and Kashtyn in front of the dairy farm’s cows*

“Faith is huge to us,” Noah had told me on one of our first calls. “Our archway says, ‘We love because He first loved us.’”

*Setting up the arch the day before the wedding*

Noah cried as he watched Stephanie come down the aisle, and Stephanie did too as she walked down the aisle with her father.

*Emotional Noah and Stephanie as she processed down the aisle*

“Let me explain what these two are about to do,” the pastor began before Noah and Stephanie’s knot-tying ceremony. “Ecclesiastes Four says, God's word, ‘Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. For if one falls down, his companion can lift him up; but pity the one who falls without another to help him up! Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm; but how can one keep warm alone? And though one may be overpowered, two can resist. Moreover, a cord of three strands is not quickly broken.’”

“The significance of the three strands of this cord is that they represent the three persons involved in the success of this marriage. One cord represents Stephanie; one represents Noah; the third one represents God. So as this knot is tied, so your lives are woven into this cord, and in its very fibers are all the hopes of your friends and family and yourselves and Kashtyn and of God, for your new life together with the intertwining of this knot, do I tie all the desires dreams love and happiness wished here in this place to your lives.”

*Noah and Stephanie performing their knot-tying ceremony*

Most of Stephanie and Noah’s guests didn’t stay too long for the reception; whether their motivation was fear of COVID or just to get home before the sun set, I’m not sure. Those who did stay joined in line dancing the same way as how Stephanie and Noah first met.

When I told the groomsmen to take a pretend drink from their Bud Lights, one quipped back, “He said pretend drink, but my beer’s already gone!”

“I can’t believe we ripped those jeans,” Noah said the next morning after the wedding. “They were so nice!” Stephanie rolled her eyes; she’d tried to stop him and the other groomsmen the night before.

*The aftermath of Noah’s groomsmen deciding to make their jeans into shorts*

Brian, Noah’s dad, gave a short toast. “Noah and Steph, I just want to say, I’m so glad that Kashtyn’s parents are married now, Hallelujah, Praise the Lord. My advice to you both is if you can't afford to pay for it in cash, you didn't need it. And if you keep God first and both try to grow closer to him, you'll grow closer together.”

Stephanie’s dad followed. “Stephanie, what can I say…” her father began. “You’ve always brought strays home… and then you brought Noah!” He and the rest of the guests shook with laughter.

*A crying Stephanie and her father dancing together*

“He even stayed for a while,” he said, thinking of when Noah broke his leg and lived with them. “Before I got rid of him.”

“And still, he came back.”

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