Conjoined Twins Carmen and Lupita Andrade on Carmen’s Marriage (Exclusive)

Conjoined twins Carmen and Lupita Andrade — as well as Carmen’s husband, Daniel McCormack — are opening up to PEOPLE about marriage, misconceptions and the questions they wish strangers would stop asking.

“We’ve always been underestimated,” Carmen tells PEOPLE exclusively — and when it comes to medical issues, sometimes their symptoms are dismissed as just being related to the fact that they’re conjoined.

Carmen says the consequences can be quite literally painful.

“We have endometriosis,” she says, adding that it’s “impeding on our day-to-day life at this point.” However, trying to find a doctor willing to give them a hysterectomy is tough because they’re “scared to touch” them with anesthesia. “I understand why,” says Carmen, but still, she can’t help but think sometimes, “How am I supposed to go to work? You gonna pay my bills?”

The conjoined twins, 25 and originally born in Mexico, have defied odds through the years and have lived far past doctors’ expectations, PEOPLE previously reported. They share some ribs, their circulatory system as well as their digestive and reproductive systems, but each have their own heart, a set of lungs and a stomach.

Doctors told them that separation surgery could end in serious neurological problems or death and ultimately Carmen and Lupita opted against it.

Their high school years offered an early example of how adults tried to define what the sisters could or couldn’t do. “They made the kids watch a video in the auditorium to, like, know who we are, for some g—— reason,” Lupita recalls.

Carmen laughs and adds, “They made us do it in eighth grade, like a month before school ended so they could present it to the kids that were going to go to that school.”

Their fellow students were “really nice” and polite, according to Carmen, who says that they also had a number of friends from their hometown who ended up going there, “so we were pretty comfortable.”

Questions They Don’t Want to Hear

When it comes to Carmen and Daniel’s marriage, there’s a lot of noise.

The couple, who met on the dating app Hinge in 2020, quietly tied the knot in Oct. 2024 on Lover’s Leap Bridge in New Milford, Conn.

Carmen is candid about the curiosity strangers direct their way. “I don’t understand why people need to know about my private parts in order [to] humanize us,” she says.

For Lupita, the constant intrusions cut differently. “I don’t like being asked if I am ever going to love [Daniel],” she says. “I love him as a brother. That’s about it.”

Daniel, 28, is equally direct, saying, “People are obsessed with sex, you know? And it is just like, frankly, it’s none of your f—— business.”

Clearing Up Misconceptions

Among the biggest misconceptions, Carmen says, is that her marriage to Daniel is fragile.

Some people, she says, insist he must be “cheating on me on the side,” will leave her in a few years time or that he’s “just kind of here for the bag.”

“I’ve got no money,” she says with a laugh.

Something else that’s not true? That their online success — they have a shared YouTube with over 256K subscribers and are also followed by thousands on their separate Instagram accounts — has made them wealthy to the point where they don’t need to work.

“We don’t want to take advantage of our supporters,” Carmen says, explaining that they’re also careful when it comes to sponsors and don’t agree to anything they wouldn’t use or trust themselves.

Ultimately, she says they make “just enough for it to be considered as supplemental income but we still have to work 50 hours a week to make ends meet/unexpected expenses,” she shares.

And Lupita wants people to know her feelings about Daniel are the opposite of what some fans assumed based on a long-running joke about not liking him. “I just want to see my sister happy,” she says. “I don’t think people understand he would not be around whatsoever if we didn’t get along.”

A Marriage Built on Respect

When asked how they navigate intimacy while honoring Lupita’s boundaries, Carmen says they’re in constant communication.

“I don’t know how else to put it,” she shares, adding that she’s “not a very overly affectionate person that way.”

“I think there’s a certain societal expectation that there needs to be affection the entire time within a relationship,” Carmen adds. “All we do is joke around a lot of the time.”

Ultimately, if her sister isn’t comfortable with something — be it cuddling or something they talk about — Carmen says “we just respect that.”

Lupita puts it simply. She says, “Yeah, I have headphones and a phone. I don’t care.”

What Made Daniel Stand Out

Lupita was the first to encourage Carmen to pursue a connection. “She’s not really good at choosing guys, and I was like, ‘You should choose that guy. He seems harmless,’ ” she remembers telling her sister. “Now they’ve been together for almost five years.”

What made him stand out? “He asked about our dog,” Lupita recalls. Carmen agrees: “Honestly, it was the fact that he asked about my dog, more than anything.”

For Daniel, his connection with Carmen was just as clear. “Just being a genuine person, having a funny personality. And I mean, look at her, she’s adorable. I love my wife,” he says. “We definitely shared that deep connection of loving animals.”

Asked about the couple’s first date, Lupita teases that “they were really boring and they talked for hours and they were both very sweaty.”

“It was summer, man,” Carmen says with a laugh. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“You Don’t Have to Be Scared”

Although Carmen and Lupita’s schedules stay packed, they still carve out time for other passions, including their upcoming role in Brandon Rogers’ Night in the Park, out Sept. 19 with Paulette Jones.

“Even with our schedules being so busy, we love making time for projects like this,” Carmen says. “It was such a fun experience and we can’t wait for everyone to see it.”

Ultimately, the sisters say they share their story in the hopes of spreading an important message for understanding without intrusion.

“You don’t have to be scared or mad about differences,” Carmen says.

Lupita adds, “You just have to accept and move on.”

And as Carmen points out, “not every disabled person is there for your curiosity and education because they’re not made to be advocates for their disability.”