Jessica Crisman and Ryan Ronne were both experiencing the darkest moments of their lives in the summer of 2010.
Jessica's husband of 10 years, Jason Crisman, took his final breath after battling an aggressive brain tumor for 10 years in Grand Rapids, Michigan leaving behind his wife and four children under the age of seven.
At the same time, hundreds of miles away in Guymon, Oklahoma, Ryan Ronne also watched as his wife Kaci, 30, passed away from a highly aggressive astrocytoma brain tumor.
Ryan was the father of three young children with his wife: Tate, then aged seven, Mya, then five and Jada, then aged eight months.
In an effort to ease their pain, both Jessica and Ryan started blogging while their spouses were fighting for their lives.
In an incredible twist of fate, their
blogs brought them together. The widow and widower met each other for the first time four months after their spouses' deaths, and then were married within the next four months. They have been happily married since 2011 living in Tennessee, and now have a child of their own, two-year-old Annabelle, making them parents of eight.
Jessica, 40, and Ryan, 40, Ronne experienced the darkest moments of their lives in the summer of 2010 when both of their spouses died from cancer. She was left as a single mother to four kids, while Ryan was a single dad to three kids. In a twist of fate, the pair met in December 2010 and eventually got married in April 2011. Pictured above in 2017 back left to right: Ryan with Luke, Tate with Annabelle, Mya, and Jessica. Front left to right: Caleb, Joshua, Jada and Mabel
'We met each other at a time when all we could offer was a lot of support because we had both lived through the exact same situations,' Jessica, 40, told DailyMail.com of Ryan, who is also 40.
'Neither of us were completely expecting to find such a deep love again - we had both been married to our childhood sweethearts who we had thought we would grow old with, until the unthinkable happened and they both passed away.
'Now we are a family with eight children. We've had our fair share of ups and downs and with no so many kids we will probably always have them, but we are a blended family and we make it work together.'
Prior to his death, Jessica started blogging about her then-husband, Jason Crisman, and his illness. She kept up writing about her family even after he passed away as a form to express herself. Pictured above in 2010 front left to right: Caleb, Mabel, Lucas and baby Joshua. Rear left to right: Jason and Jessica...