If you are a fan of TLC ‘s surprisingly addictive reality shows, then there’s a fairly good chance that you’ve fallen down the Sister Wives hole, binge-watching for hours at a time, becoming personally invested in the fascinating lives of complete strangers.
If that sounds like you, then you’re probably familiar with Sister Wives star, Maddie Bush! Here are a few random facts about her that you might not know.
1. The mainstream Mormon church initially rejected her request to join.
While she attended Utah State University, she became familiar with members of a popular Mormon church.
But when she requested to join, she would only be allowed to under the condition that she separate herself from her family, as they practice polygamy — something the church does not condone.
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She ultimately, ended up declining the church’s conditioned offer to join, remaining loyal to her family.
“Because I won’t publicly disassociate with my family, it’s too controversial for the Mormon church, so they told me I couldn’t get baptized,” she said at the time.
2. She got engaged to her now-husband, Caleb Brush, in 2015.
After a year of dating, Caleb proposed to Maddie on a snowmobile trip in Montana.
“It was cold and we were huddled in jackets and I thought he was crazy to stop,” Maddie recalled to People . “He said to come look over here. So I walked with him to the edge.”
“He told me he could never express how much he loved me, but he wanted to spend his life trying, and went down in one knee and pulled out a box.”
“I started kissing him and saying, ‘Yes, yes!,'” she added.
3. She and Caleb do not have plans to follow in Maddie’s polygamous family’s footsteps, but rather, a more traditional route.
“We are not living plural marriage,” Caleb revealed to People . “We support Maddie’s family with their choice of living plural marriage and they support us with our choice in just marrying each other.”
4. Her father officiated her’s and Caleb’s wedding ceremony.
Maddie shared this photo from their wedding, showing her father performing the ceremony.
“Thank you all for the sweet words on our wedding. It was a perfect day!,” she captioned the post. “You all made this day the amazing experience it was!!”
5. Just a couple months after tying the knot, the pair welcomed their first child.
A few months after their wedding, Maddie and Caleb announced that they were expecting their first baby. Their son, Axel, was born in May 2017.
Two years later, in 2019, they welcomed their daughter, Evangalynn Kodi Brush.
6. She wears nursing bras even when she isn’t pregnant or breastfeeding.
“If I’m being real, I basically never stopped wearing nursing bras. From my pregnancy with Axel, through my breast feeding journey with him and now all that over again with Evie. Having a good nursing bra is a huge essential for me and #thriving in this thing called motherhood,” she wrote on Instagram.
7. Her daughter has a rare medical condition.
“Our beautiful baby daughter Evie has been diagnosed with FATCO syndrome, a rare medical syndrome where bones in extremities do not fully develop,” she wrote on Instagram .
“It wasn’t a complete surprise; we were aware of some abnormalities before birth.”
“We knew something was wrong when we went in for a routine anatomy ultrasound at 26 weeks and what should have taken 45 minutes, ended up lasting a nerve-wracking two hours”
“It was then that the doctor told us that they couldn’t find all ten fingers and diagnosed the baby with oligodactyly (fewer than 10 fingers). Although this was better than expected, it was still heartbreaking news .”
“But when Evie was born, Caleb and I found out our precious little girl was missing more than just one finger. She was missing three fingers, a toe and her fibula,” she continued.
“She also had a bowed tibia, a shortened forearm and some fusing in her fingers. It was at this point, the doctors diagnosed her with FATCO syndrome .”
8. Evangalynn recently had her foot amputated.
“‘You cut her foot off? If she was functional, why did you amputate? Wait, where is her foot? Was it really necessary to cut her foot off?’ These are all questions I have received since Evie’s Surgery,” she wrote on Instagram.
“Evie’s left Tibia bone, along with the bowing it had, was also about a 1/3 shorter than her right. When she’s little it’s not super noticeable unless closely looked at. As she grows though, we were looking at the possibility of a dramatic difference.”
“This was not a light-hearted decision, we spent the better part of the last year educating ourselves, talking to doctors, prosthetists, other families, and other amputees as we came to the decision we did.”
9. Maddie admitted to feeling some “guilt” over the amputation of her daughter’s foot.
“There were lots of emotions — lots of, ‘What did I do wrong? Could I have done anything?’ ” she recalled to People .
“Just so much guilt. But I was also relieved because there could have been a whole lot more wrong.”
10. She and Caleb recently relocated from Las Vegas, where Maddie’s family lives, to North Carolina.
While Maddie would have liked to stay with her family, she and Caleb decided to uproot their lives and move to North Carolina so that she could pursue a job opportunity .
