Teen Escaped a Cult After a Forced Marriage to a Stranger. Her Husband Did Too — Then They Fell in Love

Angela and Cade Johnson were married at a laundromat in 2003 when she was 16 and he was 19.

They exchanged vows not by choice, but because the notorious polygamist cult they grew up in — the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints — forced them to do so.

The cult Angela and Cade were born into made headlines when its infamous “prophet” and leader Warren Jeffs was accused by numerous young victims — including his own children — of molesting them.

Named one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted after fleeing the cult to avoid arrest, Jeffs, now 69, was finally taken into custody in Las Vegas in 2006. He was convicted five years later of two counts of child sex abuse and sentenced to life in prison.

Because of the tumult in the church at the time, “We didn’t have too much to do with him,” Angela says. “But if you’ve ever met him, he’s just a creep. Full of arrogance.”

She didn’t like how girls and teens in the cult were forced to wed men they didn’t know. One man she knew had 24 wives.

“Getting married young was everything you were raised to do your whole life,” Angela, now 38, who grew up in British Columbia, Canada, where one branch of the sect is located, tells PEOPLE. “They didn’t even let girls go to school further than 10th grade because they saw no reason for them to get an education.”

Angela and later Cade, who grew up in Hildale, Utah, in the twin cities of Hildale and Colorado City, Ariz., where another part of the cult was located, left the church — and each other — living separate lives until they reconnected several years later. Today, they are happily married with three children, ages 18, 15 and 3. Both have careers. Angela is a labor and delivery nurse and Cade is a helicopter pilot.

Looking back, Angela says, “It’s been a journey.”

Teenage Bride and Groom

Angela and Cade still can’t believe they got married in a laundromat. They did so because the justice of the peace who performed the necessary legal ceremony was not allowed on church property because she was an “outsider,” Angela explains.

That night, the couple wed again in a religious ceremony. After that, the new teenage bride went home with her new husband, feeling out of sorts. “We both laid in bed awake all night long in the very awkward silence of just, what the heck are we doing?” she says.

As days and weeks went on, Angela realized that she didn’t want to be married. She just wanted to be a normal teenager.

“I was only 16 so I was still wanting to do things that weren’t allowed in the religion,” like listening to pop music from artists like Shania Twain and Britney Spears, she says.

Cade admits that he, too, had been breaking the cult’s strict rules. “I had been listening to music. I would sneak and drink alcohol once in a while.” But after his marriage, as head of his new household, “I realized that we’d better straighten up.”

That meant trying to keep his new bride in line with the cult’s teaching — something he didn’t really want to do.

“She had just been through all this in her father’s household and now here she was back being controlled again with her new husband who was trying to figure it out too,” he says.

The stakes, according to the cult, were higher than ever. “This was all about our ‘eternal salvation,’” he says.

Angela didn’t care. “I was like, ‘This is not for me,’” she says, deciding that she was leaving Cade.

Upset at Angela’s “rebelliousness,” her parents, with the cult’s backing, ultimately sent her to live with an aunt she had never met. But the experience was a positive one for Angela.

“She was amazing and helped me kind of get on my feet and see things from a different perspective,” she says.

Marriage 2.0

Angela stayed with her aunt until June 2004, around the time she and Cade started talking again when her best friend started dating Cade’s best friend.

Angela initially wanted to start divorce proceedings, but after spending time with Cade, who says he had “run away” from the cult, she realized how much they had in common.

“We started kind of seeing each other and talking, and ultimately, we were both like, ‘Well, you’re kind of cool,’” she says. “I joke about this, but he took his shirt off [when they were swimming, and] I was like, ‘Oh, okay. You’re all right,’” she says, laughing.

A month or so later, they decided to give it another try “since we’re already married,” she says. “The worst that can happen is we can get divorced.”

The rest is history. Nowadays, they continue to share a journey of “healing” from the traumas they endured by mountain biking, snowboarding, working on Angela’s children’s clothing line, Glimmers, and spending time with their children. “We allow them to be themselves and try not to shape or form them into something that maybe I would want,” says Cade.

Adds Angela: “I take so much pride in seeing how happy my kids are.”