Strangers continue to make a mistake. Seeing Shane Burcaw in his powered wheelchair and Hannah Aylward helping him with day-to-day tasks, many people automatically assume that she is his nurse, sister, mother, or caregiver. However, the situation is much more simple and everyday the people are actually husband and wife.
Shane, an American writer and disability advocate who was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), has been using a wheelchair since the age of two. Hannah, a content creator and an advocate, met him on the internet. In 2016, while wasting time on the college campus of Carleton, Hannah decided to watch a documentary about this boy, then spent several hours reading his blog. Hannah wrote him an e-mail about what she read, which finished with the words
“P.S. I think you’re cute”
The couple chatted online, having long FaceTime conversations, telling each other “I love you”, and seeing each other for the first time. They remained in a relationship, long-distance, across approximately 1,000 miles, until Shane moved to Minnesota. Together, they began uploading videos to their YouTube channel Squirmy and Grubs in 2018, describing their everyday lives, joking, traveling and showing the world what an interabled relationship is like.
Shane’s 2019 book, Strangers Assume My Girlfriend Is My Nurse, captured the pattern that still follows them.
“When we go out in public, people never think I’m his girlfriend,”
Hannah has said.
“I’m always assumed to be his sister, or his mom, or his nurse.”
No official count exists for how often this happens, but the couple has described the same assumption for years sometimes awkward, sometimes intrusive, occasionally hostile online. Unverified comments have questioned whether the relationship is genuine or financially motivated. Those remain speculation, not established fact.
Hannah has performed personal-care duties and has been described as Shane’s primary caregiver. That fact does not cancel the romance. The two roles coexist.
“Caregiving in our relationship is not a separate category of activity that sits outside our marriage,”
Shane has written.
“It is woven into the fabric of how we live.”
They married on September 4, 2020, in a small backyard ceremony in Minneapolis during the pandemic, with the officiant joining by Zoom.
