Couple Gets Engaged After Meeting Online. Then They Fell in Love with Another Woman and Everything Changed

Margaret French insists her marriage is “pretty boring” — once you “get past the fact that there are three of us.”

Margaret is legally married to Cody Coppola and ceremonially married to Janie Coppola, and the three have been in a committed throuple for nearly a decade. They co-own a home in Chattanooga, Tenn., and recently drew attention online after sharing striking photos from their three-way wedding in October. (“Your favorite throuple got hitched,” Margaret wrote in an Instagram caption for her nearly 50,000 followers, where she posts fantasy content.)

Margaret opened up about their relationship — how it began, the ongoing challenges of building an equal partnership among three people, and how they designed a wedding day that reflected their family.

From a Tinder hookup to something bigger

Margaret says her first meet-up with Cody, arranged through Tinder, was meant to be a simple “hookup.” Neither was seeking a serious relationship, but they clicked — and Cody “stuck around.”

Margaret had prior experience with non-monogamy, while Cody came from a more conservative background and was unfamiliar with the idea. Over time, they began talking about opening their relationship.

“He knew I was bi and had had relationships with men and women before,” Margaret says.

They spent roughly nine months “casually seeing women” together. Then they met Janie — and everything shifted.

“It happened kind of gradually — and then all at once,” Margaret says. What started as a sexual connection between Margaret and Janie quickly grew into a close friendship. Janie began spending so much time at their apartment that keeping a separate place no longer made sense.

“We do everything together and are falling in love with this person,” Margaret says. “What do we do?”

Janie was the first to say “I love you” to Margaret — and a week later, she told Cody the same. That’s when the trio realized they needed serious, practical conversations about what a committed polyamorous life would look like.

They discussed everyday issues — like rotating who sits in the passenger seat to avoid subtle imbalances — as well as bigger questions about fairness and equality, even though two of them had been together about a year and a half longer than the third.

“It is all just like constant checking in and overcommunicating,” Margaret says.

A legal marriage — and a later celebration for all three

As they navigated this transition, Margaret and Cody were also approaching a milestone: legal marriage. They had gotten engaged around the time they started seeing Janie, and Janie was involved in the celebration.

“There weren’t any hurt feelings around it — at that point, we were pretty secure with where we were at,” Margaret says. “We were in that honeymoon phase.”

That first wedding was small — 14 people total, including Janie — and they always imagined throwing a bigger celebration someday. When they finally planned the wedding of their dreams seven years later, they felt it only made sense to celebrate all three partners.

Margaret understands why some people might question the need for a three-person wedding, since U.S. law does not allow more than two people to marry. Even with extensive paperwork — wills, life insurance, and power of attorney — she says their legal protections will never fully match what a marriage license provides.

“But it was our opportunity to show our friends and family and everyone else that this is real and this is our family and we’re celebrating us as a family,” she says.

Margaret adds that the celebration also changed how they describe one another.

“I’d always called Cody my husband, he’d always called me his wife, and we called Janie our girlfriend,” she says. “Now that we’ve had the big celebration, we’re all spouses.”

“Perfect” weather, no awkwardness — and redesigned traditions

Margaret describes the wedding day as “perfect.”

“The weather was perfect. Everyone behaved. No one was being weird,” she recalls. “Nothing really went wrong.”

Some traditions needed rethinking to accommodate three partners — including the logistics of making space for three people plus an officiant — but she says the moment was worth it, especially seeing friends and family come together to affirm their relationship “forever and ever.”

“We’re all from disparate parts of the country, so there were people that were crazy important to us that had never met each other,” Margaret says. “We felt so lucky.”