Interabled couple who've been married for over two years explain how they met
Topics: Real Life, Sex and Relationships
Dominic Smithers
Featured Image Credit: Instagram/@shaneburcaw
Topics: Real Life, Sex and Relationships
An interabled couple have revealed how they met and eventually fell in love.
Shane Burcaw has a disease called spinal muscular atrophy, which is a spinal condition that causes problems with movement and weakens muscles.
As a result, he has long been an outspoken advocate for those who are differently abled, writing a number of books on the topic.
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Shane and wife Hannah Burcaw, who married in 2020, regularly open up about their relationship on their joint YouTube channel, Squirmy and Grubs.
With Hannah being able-bodied, people tend to have a lot of questions, such as how they get intimate, as well as a lot of abuse from internet trolls.
In a recent video, the couple discussed how they met one another, despite the fact they lived so far apart.
Recalling the story, Hannah said: "We met almost exactly seven years ago now, when I saw a documentary on YouTube, a little like, 10-minute documentary that one of my favourite actors, Rainn Wilson from The Office, put on his YouTube channel.
"And it was a doc about Shane's life generally. And he talked about the non-profit that he ran."
She went on: "I felt like we'd get along, and I lived in Minnesota and he lived in Pennsylvania, there was no chance of us meeting in person.
"I emailed him, which is really weird of me to do, like, personality-wise, I've never emailed a stranger. I was like, 'Oh my God, I need to know this person, I feel like we would get along so well'.
"And we did, so we began FaceTiming after we texted for like a day, we FaceTimed the next day, and then I visited two months later.
"And we have been together as a couple ever since then."
Shane said that some tend to think they got together really quickly, but he explained that it was much more gradual.
"I think some people have the impression that like, you reached out to me and that your first email was like, 'Hello, would you like to get married?'" he joked.
"But yeah, her first email was very casual. But when I read it, I was like, 'Oh, wow, we do have a lot in common, let's talk, you know, for fun'. And then we fell in love.
And despite having to spend a couple of years doing long-distance, Hannah and Shane managed to make it work.
She said: "It was very, very inconvenient that we were dating because we were a thousand miles apart - the worst two years of our lives being so long-distance, and best two years, but you know, the long-distance was horrible.
"So it was not an ideal situation, by any means."
If you were looking for a sign to send that email, Hannah and Shane might be it.