There's a hilarious Saturday Night Live sketch called "Meet Your Second Wife." It's a game show where the hosts - played by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler - inform male contestants that, several years in the future, they will leave their current wives to be with a younger woman. Then they bring out the younger wife, who, in the present day, is still a teenager, a child, or not even born yet. Awkward.
It's a brilliant premise that exposes an uncomfortable truth. When you meet a couple with a May-December romance - usually a young woman and an older man - there's nothing wrong with them dating each other, since they're two consenting adults. But at the same time, what if they met each other decades earlier? When she was a child, he was an adult. On one hand, there's something cringey about a huge age difference. But on the other hand, love knows no age, right? Who are we to judge?
Well, meet 25-year-old Ryan Rosado and 55-year-old Steven Russell. (Yes, Ryan is a girl's name. Don't assume her gender. It's 2018!) After the two met at a work lunch, they started dating, and yes you did the math right: He's thirty years her senior. But it's not the first time Ryan's courted a silver fox: Her previous boyfriend was fourteen years older. She really respects her elders.
Surprisingly, Ryan's family is cool with the relationship. "When I told my mum, she said to me: 'We both have good taste in men'," Ryan said in an interview. "My family always says that age doesn't matter once someone is an adult, because it doesn't define anything about that person. I was always been seen as the 'old soul' in my friendship group."
Steven says he was concerned people would think he was having a mid-life crisis. However, everyone has been pretty cool with their 60's baby-90's baby romance - everyone, that is, except for Steven's daughters, who happen to be the same age as Ryan. I mean, imagine your mom or dad dating someone your age. That would be pretty weird, right? Steven's daughters have struggled to accept Ryan, who they might have to call "Mom" one day. So, the couple has promised not to have any children to keep the peace. Boom. Problem solved. Now they'll be one big happy family, forever.
Obviously, they have their fair share of critics, but Ryan defends their relationship. "Most people have come to accept it and say: 'Whatever makes you guys happy. You aren't doing anything wrong'," explains Ryan. "I know I am with someone who is a father and would love to see every side of him; the business man, the adventurer, and of course, the family guy and father...we are better together than we were apart."
Well, take that naysayers. Ryan insists they have an awesome relationship. It's a classic love story, like Romeo's dad and Juliet. As they say, age ain't nothing but a number. It's just a good thing that ten or twenty years ago, Steven didn't go on Meet Your Second Wife.
