Jodi Hildebrandt’s Family: All About Her Ex-Husband, Estranged Children and Niece By Caroline Blair

Jodi Hildebrandt is a former family and relationship counselor who kept much of her personal life private, despite gaining a significant social media following for her parenting advice.

Hildebrandt, whose career and crimes are followed in the Netflix documentary Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story, rose to fame in Utah as a prominent therapist in the Church of the Latter-day Saints of Jesus Christ community. In addition to individual services, she also launched the popular ConneXions program, which was a relationship counseling business complete with viral podcasts, videos and interviews.

Although she advised other people on what to do within their families and marriages, she rarely shared details from her own family and relationships.

“Jodi shared very little with us about her own history,” her past client, Valerie Jackson, said in the documentary.

As Hildebrandt’s profile began to grow, she started to develop a close working and personal relationship with YouTubers Ruby and Kevin Franke and their six children. By 2023, Hildebrandt and Ruby moved four of her kids to Hildebrandt’s home in Ivins, Utah. Ruby and Hildebrandt were arrested for aggravated child abuse in August 2023, and they have each been sentenced to four to 30 years in prison.

Here’s everything to know about Jodi Hildebrandt’s family.

Hildebrandt was married for three years

For years, Hildebrandt made a living off of giving other couples marriage and relationship advice, but she rarely spoke about her own marriage.

The Netflix documentary features a video of Hildebrandt speaking, where she explained that she was born in 1969 and was raised in a “traditional LDS home” with six siblings. She went on to serve a mission in Puerto Rico before getting married.

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She married her husband — whom she has never publicly identified — in 1993, but she got divorced in 1996.

“When my marriage dissolved three years later, it caught me somewhat by surprise, because my tribe, as I call it, had not taught me or prepared me for divorce,” she said of the LDS church in the resurfaced video. “I was really wounded inside from not feeling a protection from the church.”

She has two adult children who are estranged from her

During her three-year marriage, she and her husband welcomed two children together.

After her divorce, she had “two children, and I decided to enter graduate school,” Hildebrandt explained in the resurfaced interview in the Netflix documentary.

Hildebrandt’s children have never been named, but Detective Jessica Bate of the Santa Clara-Ivins Police Department — who investigated Hildebrandt and Franke — claimed that her children were adults who didn’t keep in contact with their mother.

“I learned more about Jodi’s family,” said in Evil Influencer. “Her two children were adults now, and she was estranged from both of them. They didn’t want any contact with her.”

Jackson also alleged in the documentary that Hildebrandt confided in her about how her own family “hated her.”

“She told us one time about her Thanksgiving where she went home to her family and how just everyone hated her,” Jackson said in the documentary. “I remember thinking, ‘That’s weird. Like, I’m coming to you so that I can repair these relationships with my family, and yet you have no one in your family that values you or respects you.’ ”

Hildebrandt’s niece claimed she was abusive

In addition to raising her own two children, Hildebrandt also took in her niece, Jessi Hildebrandt — who uses they/them pronouns — in the late 2000s. After Hildebrandt was arrested for child abuse, Jessi alleged that their aunt was also abusive towards them.

“The things that I experienced while living with Jodi — I experienced being tied, I experienced being duct taped, I experienced being blindfolded, I experienced severe isolation, I experienced severe emotional, spiritual and psychological abuse,” Jessi claimed in an interview with KUTV2 News in September 2023.

Jessi alleged that their aunt told them that they “shouldn’t be around other people” and that they were “dangerous to be around.”

“People were afraid of me to the point where I was afraid of myself,” they recalled. Jessi claimed that they were “isolated for up to 12 hours a day” and were once even “forced to sleep outside in the snow.”

Jessi has continued speaking out about Hildebrandt’s alleged abuse, detailing her so-called “Jodi Method” in the 2025 four-part ID docuseries, Ruby & Jodi: A Cult of Sin and Influence. Jessi alleged that Hildebrandt forced them to cut their hair, banned them from wearing makeup and using tampons and limited their shower time.

“She focused on the things that brought me the most identity and took them from me,” they claimed. “And at the time, even while I was in it, I didn’t know that this was abuse. I thought the reason it wasn’t working was because of some defect in me that I wasn’t trying hard enough, that I wasn’t spiritual enough, faithful enough, that I was manipulating and lying, and I didn’t even know that’s what I was doing.”

Jessi lived with Jodi for a year before running away and briefly living in a homeless shelter. They eventually found work as a tattoo artist and has continued pursuing the art form while living in Berlin, Germany.

“I don’t want to put too much of a bow on it, but I mean, I still deal with the after-effects of living with Jodi every day,” Jessi said in the docuseries. “I have severe, complex PTSD from that experience that affects me every day … I just want to see her held accountable. I want her to never have access to any vulnerable person ever again. I want her to never have access to anyone ever again.”

Hildebrandt developed a close relationship with Ruby Franke and her children

In the midst of Hildebrandt’s rise to prominence with her popular ConneXions program, she began working with Ruby and her then-husband, Kevin. At the time, the couple and their six children were creating content for their massively successful YouTube channel, 8 Passengers.

Hildebrandt and Ruby quickly developed a strong personal and working relationship. Hildebrandt started counseling Ruby, Kevin and their children, while she and Ruby also combined forces to create the Moms of Truth podcast and social media pages.

In 2022, Hildebrandt moved into the Franke home, while Kevin moved out shortly afterwards. Kevin and Ruby separated later that year.

Hildebrandt and Ruby took their connection a step further in May 2023 when they moved four of the youngest Franke children with them 300 miles away to Hildebrandt’s home in Ivins. Over the next few months, Ruby and Hildebrandt continued sharing strict parenting advice content.

In August 2023, Ruby and Hildebrandt were arrested on child abuse charges after her then-12-year-old son escaped and asked a neighbor to call the police. Ruby’s journals were later discovered where she detailed the abuse she and Hildebrandt imposed on the two youngest children. Ruby later claimed that Hildebrandt directed the abuse.

Both Ruby and Hildebrandt later pleaded guilty to four of six counts of aggravated child abuse. In February 2024, a judge sentenced them to four to 30 years in prison, which was the maximum sentence for their offenses.