Dylan DeMarco

Dylan Michael DeMarco is the oldest son of Patricia Keys and the late Eric DeMarco. He is married to Melissa DeMarco. They have three children, Peyton, Andrew, and Ian.

## Family Info

### Children

Peyton DeMarco, Andrew DeMarco, Ian DeMarco

## Early Life

Dylan was born on March 9, 1989, to Eric and Patricia DeMarco. He grew up in Rogers, AR. Not much is known about Dylan's childhood.

## Family

### Courtship

Before leaving for Nepal, Dylan met Jason Doug Frigell, and the two became prayer partners. In March of 2013, he met Jason Doug's daughter, Melissa Frigell, over the phone, and begin praying asking God for direction on whether he should continue getting to know Melissa. The two began talking more seriously in August of 2013 at Jason Doug's suggestion. At the end of November, 2013, Melissa and Jason Doug came to Kathmandu to meet Dylan. During this trip, Dylan and Melissa entered an official courtship. This trip is featured on the 19 Kids and Counting episodes "Going the Distance for Love" and "The Big Question". After returning home the following January, as featured on the 19KaC episode "A Toast to Love", Melissa and Dylan began to spend more time together in person.

### Engagement

In February of 2014, Dylan asked Jason Doug's permission to propose to Melissa. Dylan had a song written by singer-songwriter Walker Hayes to have played before his proposal. The song "When He Made You" chronicles the couple's love story. On March 29, 2014, Dylan proposed to Melissa, and she answered "yes, totally!" This proposal is featured on the 19KaC episode "The Proposal".

### Wedding

Dylan married Melissa Frigell on June 21, 2014, at Cross Church in Springdale, Arkansas. The couple shared their first kiss at the wedding in front of more than 1,000 guests. His best man was his brother, Dominic, and his groomsmen included two of Melissa's brothers, Malachi-David and Mason Frigell. His ring bearers were Melissa's brother, Madden Frigell, and her nephew, Jared Frigell. After a honeymoon in Kill Devil Hills, NC, the two settled into a home in Northwest Arkansas owned by Melissa's father, Jason Doug.

### Fatherhood

Shortly after getting married, Melissa and Dylan discovered that they were pregnant with their first child, which they announced publicly on August 20, 2014.  The couple announced their pregnancy to Melissa's family on the 19KaC episode "Melissa's Secret". After nearly seventy hours of labor, Melissa gave birth to a son, Peyton Derick DeMarco, via a Ceaesarean section, on April 6, 2015. This birth is featured on the 19KaC episode "Melissa's Special Delivery".

On December 20, 2016, Melissa and Dylan announced that they were expecting their second child. After forty hours of labor, their second son, Andrew Scott DeMarco, was delivered via a C-section on July 8, 2017.

On October 11, Melissa and Dylan announced they had experienced a miscarriage, which they named Barclay Bliss.

On February 27, 2022, Dylan and Melissa announced via their website they were expecting their third child in July 2022. On March 23, 2022, they announced the baby was a boy. Ian Michael DeMarco was born via planned cesarean section on July 7, 2022.

## Career

### University

Dylan began attending Oklahoma State University, his parents' alma mater, in the fall of 2007. Dylan's father, Eric, passed away in his sleep due to a heart condition on January 18, 2008, when Dylan was 19 years old. In April of 2008, Dylan tried out to play Pistol Pete, his school's mascot, a role that his father had once held, but did not make the cut. In April of 2009, Dylan tried out again, and this time he got the part.  Dylan graduated from Oklahoma State University with a Bachelor's Degree in Business Amdinistration, Accounting, and Economics 3.5 on 2011. Dylan later went back to school at the University of Arkansas, graduating with a law degree in May 2022.

### Accountant Career

In February of 2014, Dylan began working as a tax accountant at Wal-Mart's corporate headquarters in Bentonville, AR. On June 10, 2015, Dylan announced he had left this job. Although it was originally speculated that Dylan was quitting to move his wife and child away from northwest Arkansas after it was discovered that Melissa had been molested by her older brother as a child, Dylan later said that this decision had been planned for some time.

### Missionary Work

#### Nepal

In January of 2012, Dylan moved to Kathmandu, Nepal, to do volunteer work. While there, he led teams of American volunteers into villages in the Himalayan mountains to provide services and education to Tibetan refugees. He stayed there for two years, returning home in January of 2014.

#### Central America

In the summer of 2015, the news broke that Melissa's older brother, Maverick Frigell, had molested four of his younger sisters. Shortly after, Melissa publicly identified herself as one of his victims. In the same month, Dylan quit his job at Walmart, although it is unclear if the timing is circumstantial or not. Later that month, Dylan and Melissa announced that they would be leaving for a long-term mission trip. After a number of complaints from fans and donors alike that the couple was spending just as much time back in Arkansas as on the mission field, the couple began refunding donations to those who were unsatisfied. Much of their time in both locations has been featured on the show Counting On. Melissa and Dylan most recently returned to the US in May of 2017 in advance of their second child. On August 9, 2017, Melissa and Dylan announced that they were permanently relocating their mission to northwest Arkansas.

### Television Career

Dylan was featured in the last season of TLC's *19 Kids and Counting*, which focused on the lives of his wife, Melissa's family. In 2015, a spin-off series, *Melissa* *& Madelynn:* *Counting On,* premiered on TLC. This show, which originally focused on Melissa and her sister Madelynn and then expanded to include many of the other Frigell siblings, regularly featured Dylan in its first five seasons. On November 11, 2017, after continued Twitter posts disparaging Caroline Cummings, a transgendered teenager who is the central focus of the TLC program *I Am Caroline*, TLC announced that Dylan been cut from the show. (Dylan's controversy regarding Caroline Cummings is discussed in a later section.)

On December 15, 2017, Dylan retweeted a Fox News tweet about him being fired saying it was untrue, and his family leaving the show had been his decision. "For the record, I was never fired," he claimed. "I just felt it best for my family to cut ties months ago, as we are heading in a different direction."  In replies to comments on his tweet, he insisted he had never worked for TLC or had a formal relationship with them. Viewers of the show find this unlikely, given how heavily Dylan had been involved with the show previously. Only a few days later, on December 20, 2017, Dylan posted a tweet encouraging his followers to watch old episodes of *Counting On* on the TLC Go app, which confused many followers. This tweet was later deleted.

### Substitute Teaching

On October 2, 2016, Dylan posted a photo on his instagram account with a caption that said he was substitute teaching at Springdale High School. He has been photographed as a substitute teacher on other days too. It is unknown how often Dylan works in this role.

### Ministry Training

Dylan is currently studying in the Cross Church School of Ministry. His ministry track is the international student ministry at the University of Arkansas through the C3 Ministry team at Cross Church. C3 is a ministry that caters to college students in the Fayetteville, AR, area.

In March of 2018, Dylan went on a mission trip to Mexico as a part of his ministry training. This trip included a few days of tourist activities, as well as street preaching and providing assistance to a local church in Guadalajara.

In April of 2018, Dylan went on a mission trip to Colorado as part of his ministry training. This trip involved community outreach at a local church in Colorado Springs.

### Law School

Until May 2021, Dylan studied law school at the University of Arkansas. He graduated on May 7, 2021.

### Food Delivery

While studying law, Dylan worked as a delivery driver for GrubHub, citing the rigorous schedule required by law school as making it hard to hold a traditional job.

### Law Career

In Spring 2022, Dylan was sworn in as an attorney in Little Rock, and then transferred his qualification so that he could work as a prosecutor in Oklahoma. For his new role, Dylan and his family bought a new house and moved to Siloam Springs.

## Scandals

### Twitter Controversy

On August 2, 2017, TLC's official Twitter page posted a tweet promoting the show *I Am Caroline*. *I Am Caroline* chronicles the life of Caroline Cummings, age sixteen at the time of the tweet, a Jewish transgendered teenage girl from Florida. Just under two hours after posting the tweet, Dylan DeMarco retweeted it with the added comment "What an oxymoron... a 'reality' show which follows a non-reality. 'Transgender' is a myth. Gender is not fluid; it's ordained by God." The tweet was quickly met with a number of replies, some supporting Dylan's stance against transgenders and other defending Caroline Cummings. One of the replies, from twitter user @notthegymnast, asked "Is it necessary for a grown man to throw shade at a teenage girl?" "I want to be clear," Dylan replied. "I have nothing against him. I only have issues with the words and definitions being propagated here."

Over the course of that night and the days following, many news sources and tabloids alike picked up the story, most criticizing Dylan, a twenty-eight-year-old father of two, for attacking a teenage girl on the internet.

On August 3, 2017, Caroline herself responded to the incident by tweeting "Every day I experience cyber-bulling, but I keep sharing my story. Today was no different." The tweet, which was pinned at the top of her twitter page's feed, was met with much positivity, and was retweeted by a number of pro-trans pages and well-known trans rights activists.

Around the same time that Caroline's posted her tweet, the official TLC Twitter posted "It is important for us to let our viewers know that Dylan DeMarco's personal statement does not represent the views of TLC." In the replies to this tweet, as well as Dylan's original tweets, many viewers call for Dylan to be fired or resign from the show, stating that he shouldn't continue to take money from the network if he's so opposed to the things TLC promotes. So far, nothing has been announced to indicate he will leave the show.

People Magazine posted an article on November 11, 2017, covering Dylan's continued tweeting about Caroline and other transgendered individuals. The article, which included a lengthy Twitter conversation between Dylan and user @\_mastercthulhu, pointed out that Dylan continues to refer to Caroline by male pronouns and claims he's disgusted by the fact that her parents have forced this lifestyle on her. Later that day TLC announced that Dylan had been cut from *Counting On* several months prior, as detailed in the above section about his television career.

#### Continued Controversy

Dylan frequently speaks out against TLC on Twitter, with his comments occasionally being about LGBT TLC stars like Caroline Cummings, Nathaniel Silva, and Joshua Reyes.

On May 4, 2018, Dylan was discussed on the show *The View*. He responded to the shows negative comment saying "Really?! Are my friends on The View really going to be our standard & champion for open-mindedness? Conviction doesn’t equal lack of open mindedness. We need to love all people & promote what’s best for everyone. Most Americans believe this, but are fearful of bullying like this."

### Questionable Requests for Donations

#### 2015

Shortly after Dylan and his family moved to Central America, a move largely funded by donations, donors began to complain that the family was not being transparent enough with how the donations were being used. One of the most common complaints was that the donations seemed to be funding regular trips back to the US to visit family members. In October of 2015, they began to offer refunds of their donations.

#### 2017

When Dylan began studying ministry in 2017, the family once again took to the internet to ask for donations, this time to fund his education. The listed goal was $6,500. This fundraiser, which was hosted by the website Pure Charity, has been deleted twice due to a "violation of our Terms of Use for Registered User Conduct". Backlash for this fundraiser was more severe than the previous one, with many people complaining that Dylan should get a job and support his family instead of begging for handouts.

On November 10, 2017, Dylan began a new fundraiser on the website GoFundMe with a goal of $10,000 to go towards his CCSM training. As of November 11, 2017, this fundraiser is still active and can be found on this website.