Abby and Brittany Hensel, the dicephalic parapagus conjoined twins who first appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show as children and later starred in their own TLC reality series, have lived largely out of the spotlight since graduating from Bethel University and beginning careers as elementary school teachers in their home state of Minnesota. In late March 2024, however, public records obtained by Today revealed that Abby had married Joshua Bowling, a nurse and U.S. Army veteran, in November 2021. The ceremony took place at the Jerome Event Center in Delano, Minnesota, and was attended by close family and friends, including Brittany. For more than two years the couple and the twins maintained near-total privacy around the union, sharing only limited pH๏τos later on social media and a Facebook profile picture that showed the twins in a white lace wedding dress standing with Bowling in a gray suit.
The delayed public confirmation surprised many longtime followers who had ᴀssumed the sisters continued the quiet life they had cultivated after the cameras left. Bowling, born in 1989, served as an Army healthcare specialist from 2010 to 2014 with deployments overseas and later became a registered nurse. The marriage made Abby a stepmother to his daughter Isabella from a previous relationship. In the months after the news broke, the twins posted short TikTok videos acknowledging the sudden surge of online attention, including one captioned “The internet is extra LOUD today” and another using scenes from Monsters, Inc. paired with eyeroll emojis. They also shared a first-dance clip set to a remix of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep,” in which the twins and Bowling moved together. The revelation highlighted how carefully the family had guarded their personal milestones and how quickly public curiosity returned once a single official record surfaced. By 2025 and into 2026 the family continued to appear only occasionally in pH๏τos shared by Bowling or the twins, consistently emphasizing a preference for ordinary life over ongoing media scrutiny.
Joshua Bowling entered the public conversation in spring 2024 solely because of his marriage to Abby Hensel, yet details of his earlier life quickly circulated once the wedding records became known. He enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as a healthcare specialist, completing deployments to Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan before leaving the service around 2014 at the rank of specialist and receiving multiple commendations. After the military he trained and worked as a registered nurse. Bowling had previously been married to Annica Bowling; the couple wed in 2010, had a daughter named Isabella in 2016, and divorced in 2019. They continued to share joint custody of Isabella. In October 2023, roughly two years after Bowling’s marriage to Abby, Annica filed a paternity action in Minnesota court naming both Bowling and another man, Gavin Vatnsdal, in connection with her second daughter, born in late 2020. Court documents and later statements confirmed that DNA testing established Vatnsdal as the biological father.
A judge subsequently discharged Bowling from the case. The episode drew additional headlines because it surfaced so soon after the Hensel marriage became public knowledge, yet the resolution was straightforward and final according to reporting by the New York Post and other outlets. PH๏τos from the 2021 wedding and subsequent family gatherings showed Isabella present and interacting with Abby and Brittany, indicating that the blended family had already formed by the time the paternity matter arose. Bowling has otherwise kept a low public profile, occasionally updating a Facebook profile picture that includes the twins and posting brief personal notes, while the family as a whole has avoided lengthy interviews or reality-television returns.
