At Remarriage, a Guest Who Was 9 Years Old Became the Third Wife 15 Years Later... Turns Out She Was a 6th Cousin

Story of Indonesian Woman Shared

A story has emerged about a woman whose 38-year-old older husband turned out to be a relative she had met 15 years ago at a wedding.

Renata Padea (right), an Indonesian woman who found out late that she married a relative 38 years older than her, and her husband. [Image source=TikTok capture]

On the 20th, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post (SCMP) and others reported the story of Renata Padea (24) from Bangka Island, Indonesia, who married a man 38 years her senior in 2020 and gave birth to a child after one year. The two met at a gathering in 2019, and at that time, the husband was divorced from his second wife.

Renata Padea (inside the circle) who attended her husband's wedding 15 years ago and her husband (second from the right), who was the groom at the time.
[Image source=TikTok capture]

One day, Padea discovered an astonishing fact: she and her husband were relatives and had met 15 years earlier. While casually looking through her husband's old wedding album from 2009, she found a group photo in which she appeared as a 9-year-old child, realizing she had attended her husband's wedding as a "little guest." Furthermore, her husband was the nephew of Padea's aunt, making them sixth cousins by kinship. Since they lived in different regions and relatives rarely interacted, neither of them knew about their familial relationship. Padea shared this revelation on social media, saying, "Although there is an age gap between my husband and me, we get along well and live a happy life."

Netizens who saw this reacted cynically, with comments like "I can't understand it, but I hope they don't divorce this time." However, some expressed support, saying, "Meeting him again as a child grew into an adult is fate," encouraging the couple.

In Indonesia, child marriage is known to be a common custom. UNICEF estimates that 14% of Indonesian women marry before the age of 18, and 1% marry younger than 15. This is attributed to poverty, limited education, and religious reasons in Indonesia. In 2019, Indonesia amended its marriage law to set the minimum marriage age at 21 for both men and women without parental consent. However, with parental request and religious authority approval, marriage at a younger age is still permitted. Therefore, many Indonesian girls still marry young according to their parents' wishes, experiencing early childbirth and, in some cases, becoming victims of domestic violence.