Second Chance Queen

Kristianna Mrjenovich (00:00)
Hey Everybody, welcome back to episode 2 of Second Chance Queen podcast. I am Kristianna Mrjenovich, your Second Chance Queen. And today's episode is lobster of my life and we are going to have a very special guest tonight, who is my husband.

Hi, Babe!

James Mrjenovich (00:21)
Hey baby.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (00:23)
welcome to the Second Chance Queen podcast. It feels incredibly odd to say that from across the house. But I'm so honored to have you as my very first guest. We are on episode two, and our episode is lobster of my life. So welcome to episode two.

this episode, I would love to kind of run down our story, share our story because we have a whopper of a story for everybody.

think we should tell everybody how we

kind of go from there.

There's probably going to be so many questions about

out a little bit about how we met. But I haven't gone into detail. So we're gonna go back to 2021.

very late night, like 11 o

where we were both laying in bed. Nothing good ever happens on Omegle, but we were laying in bed. And I got a chat from a stranger on Omegle that said,

James Mrjenovich (01:37)
Hi, ASL.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (01:37)
say? And my response was,

ASL question mark, I believe. And I was informed that ASL means age, sex, location. So I thought it was American Sign Language. I'll be honest But yeah, so I gave my age, sex, and location.

James Mrjenovich (01:47)
Exactly.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (02:04)
he was 26, male Illinois.

we started talking

we had a really good first conversation, I'd say.

James Mrjenovich (02:15)
It was a whole mix of random topics, but it was, it caught, it kept our interest.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (02:24)
we decided to take it to Snapchat of all places because I was not about to give the stranger on Omegle my actual phone number. Let's

James Mrjenovich (02:32)
Cause you know, we're starting off on Omegle may as well upgrade to Snapchat of all things.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (02:37)
Stranger danger internet

went to Snapchat.

I got called a catfish, I think. If I'm not mistaken.

James Mrjenovich (02:48)
I didn't say

exactly say catfish but I said there's no fucking way I'm this lucky to find somebody that looks like

Kristianna Mrjenovich (02:57)
did not think that I was real. He did not think that I was real, but I was very much real.

James Mrjenovich (02:56)
So catfish is paraphrasing.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (03:05)
said I love you the end of

When you know, you know, like I feel like that's the only way. Yeah, 1300 miles away, we just knew. And there it was there was a lot of intricacies

James Mrjenovich (03:11)
even from about 1300 miles away.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (03:24)
was in the middle of starting the divorce proceedings from my previous marriage when we met

How long did it take before you moved to Florida? Tell me about this process. Tell our listeners about how this happened.

James Mrjenovich (03:45)
four months, four months and two days. And the only reason it took that long is I had to get some finances in order and pay off some debt and feel comfortable. So financially provide for you when I got

Kristianna Mrjenovich (04:01)
-May, you moved down here. And what was it like seeing me for the first time when you saw me in

James Mrjenovich (04:11)
gonna sound cliche, but it felt like I was finally home. I finally felt like I was where I should

Kristianna Mrjenovich (04:20)
I love that. I never get sick of hearing

So that was mid May. When did we get married for the first time?

James Mrjenovich (04:31)
days after I got here.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (04:36)
May 28th, 2021, we got married at the courthouse. I pretended to run away from you several times standing in line at the courthouse. I was just like... But I did not and we got married. And then we went to the melting pot for our dinner.

James Mrjenovich (04:45)
a lot.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (05:03)
And that has been a tradition in our relationship.

James Mrjenovich (05:06)
That's a wedding slash anniversary tradition.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (05:10)
me about our second wedding.

James Mrjenovich (05:12)
before I even moved down here, we had planned, partially planned and paid for a trip to Niagara Falls on 4th of July weekend. Like we had a lot of it lined up, but it wasn't totally finalized until I was actually down here. And then we did the legal marriage, and we said, you know what, screw it, we're gonna keep the Niagara Falls wedding. We're just gonna renewal sort of thing, even though we're already married.

We went up and had a small ceremony on the falls or in the park next to the falls. And then we went to melt and pot again.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (05:49)
on that melting pot. If you're listening melting pot. That is that is our our restaurant for sure.

James Mrjenovich (05:50)
...

Kristianna Mrjenovich (05:58)
Then we kind of did things backwards because we went to Disney World the end of July.

James Mrjenovich (06:09)
I did an official proposal because I knew disney proposal was always your dream growing up.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (06:19)
So even though we were legally married and had two weddings, I did not have an engagement ring yet. So he gave me my engagement ring at Disney World in front of Cinderella's Castle.

flash forward a little bit to Halloween of 2021. Where we were walking around and what do you remember what we saw a lot that night?

were a lot of babies everywhere. Okay, everywhere.

James Mrjenovich (06:55)
Hang on. Hold that thought. Do you remember what our first costume

Kristianna Mrjenovich (07:00)
were charity in P .T. Barnum from a million dreams scene of The Greatest Showman.

James Mrjenovich (07:07)
first couple's costume ever.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (07:10)
Yes, and Eli was baby Yoda and Aiden was carnage and we hand painted that carnage costume. Yeah,

James Mrjenovich (07:14)
...

Yep. Morphe suit. Still around here

Kristianna Mrjenovich (07:23)
we were walking around Halloween and we were actually walking around with my ex -husband and his girlfriend at the time. We love

were walking around and James and I kept seeing babies everywhere.

a couple weeks after that, probably about a month after that,

we were still talking about all the babies. And I remember saying, I'm not having a baby with you until you tell me you want to have a baby with me because both of my boys were under different circumstances and I wanted my next baby to be chosen and planned and we were both going to be all in on

what happened after that?

James Mrjenovich (08:19)
You were in the kitchen cooking, I believe, and I was sitting on the couch. And the second that came out of your mouth, I stood up, walked over to you and grabbed you by the shoulders, looked you right in the eye and said, I want to have a baby with you.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (08:33)
he did.

And that was, I think, like a Sunday or a Monday, because I made an appointment for that Friday,

And I got things handled so that we could start trying for a baby.

And so we started trying in December 2021

we didn't give up. And then on our wedding day in 2022, May 28, which was our one year official wedding anniversary of our courthouse marriage, and the day that we had a big wedding planned for friends and family, we finally got two pink lines.

we found out that we were having our daughter, Miss Nora, on our wedding day. And James actually brought

a bow that I had bought when we started trying for Nora in December to our wedding and he tied it on my bouquet. So in our wedding pictures, if you spot it, there is a pink bow with a Christmas tree on my bouquet. He knew it was going to be a girl.

James Mrjenovich (09:55)
refuse to ever say anything about it being a boy.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (09:59)
And it was. And now we have a year and a half old little

child.

and she's the love of our lives. I feel like I speak for both of us.

James Mrjenovich (10:14)
Let's rewind, hang on, let's rewind just a little bit. One of our very first conversations was you telling me you had always wanted a daughter and you were afraid that it would never happen. And when I tried convincing you that it would, what did I say? Or you asked why I was so sure. What did I say?

Kristianna Mrjenovich (10:19)
You

Yeah.

Yup.

I asked why you're so sure and you said if you're asking me if I'm gonna give you a daughter, it's too soon to tell. But I have a hunch. Just call it a hunch. So in our marriage, in our relationship, when the rough gets going or we're having anxiety and we don't know.

what's going on with something and ask the other person for reassurance. Just call it a hunch is the reassurance answer in our marriage. We are always just call it a hunch.

now here we are is 2024. What do we do in January of this year?

James Mrjenovich (11:27)
We built our brand new beautiful two story house that you've always wanted.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (11:34)
We did.

James Mrjenovich (11:34)
For reference, I grew up in a two -story house and she was always jealous of it. She never had a two -story house but always wanted one.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (11:39)
Yes, I was. I always want to go up and down the stairs, up and down the stairs. So we built a house with a staircase that's like two sets of stairs up one direction and then you got to go the other direction. And

James Mrjenovich (11:53)
We started building last summer and this January it was finally done.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (11:56)
Yeah, my hips already are angry at me. I have bad hips to begin with and my hips are already like, why did you build the two story house you silly lady?

James Mrjenovich (12:01)
Thank you.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (12:08)
But it's our dream house and I wouldn't trade it for the world.

James Mrjenovich (12:14)
you're missing right before that we went to your or you had your first pageant out in Virginia I never thought I'd be a pageant husband shit a pageant dad too

Kristianna Mrjenovich (12:22)
I did. We're in, we don't. Yes, that girl has more crowns than I do. Peachy has more crowns than mama does. Let's be real. She is the OG pageant queen. She got her first crown before me. Yeah, we are. We're in trouble with that girl.

James Mrjenovich (12:40)
I'm gonna have to build her a crown showcase like I did for your shoes.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (12:51)
So the moral of the story, I guess, the first thing I would tell anybody listening is, folks, do not try this at home. I do not recommend that you meet your husband on Omegle of all places. I don't. I give it 10 stars. You will probably have negative five stars. Do not recommend, don't

don't do it like fresh off the tails of a divorce because that has had its own set of obstacles, I think, for us as a couple because Kristianna wants to be miss independent sometimes.

She had 10 years of not making decisions for herself. And so now the devil on her shoulder likes to take control sometimes and drive.

James Mrjenovich (13:59)
same time I let you take the reins and I don't stop you from doing anything.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (14:05)
No, he doesn't. My husband is an enabler. If it can be enabled, he is enabling.

James Mrjenovich (14:11)
Yeah.

She's not wrong.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (14:16)
But it works. So my first thing is don't meet your spouse on a week. My second thing is if you are leaving an abusive relationship, take time for yourself. I was fortunate in that when I left my abusive marriage, there were several months before I met James where I had my apartment.

I was still interacting with my now ex -husband, but I did a lot of healing in that timeframe. I did a lot of healing in a short amount of time. And the thing about long -term abusive marriages that people don't realize is you check out or you start to check out a long time before you leave that marriage. You emotionally, we as women,

emotionally check out a long time before we time before we take that plunge. It's a defense mechanism, I'd say. So I had a lot of time before that actual marriage ended where I was bracing for that marriage to end. And I was giving that relationship the second, third, fourth millionth chance and it just was not going to work. So I was preparing for that a long time before I actually

said I want the divorce and then the months that lapsed where, you know, it was the holidays and everything was going on and then, you know, right around the time we met is when I was like, okay, yeah, I do want the divorce. We need to start the paperwork. And then you and I were, you know, building things. It's very fair to say, I think for both of us that our relationship started very much as a friendship.

before it became a relationship. I feel like we both needed someone to talk to, hence why we were on Omegle. We needed someone to talk to and someone to listen and needed a friend. And so we met each other in that time span where we needed that. And I feel like that has been the biggest

part of our success as a couple has been building off of a friendship.

James Mrjenovich (16:39)
It was.

It was definitely the best

Kristianna Mrjenovich (17:09)
....

we took time to really get to know each other, especially with us being in two separate states. When you have a relationship that starts out long distance the way ours did as a friendship and then a relationship and long distance, we had nothing but communication for four months. I mean, we had, I think we had every conversation under the sun.

I'm pretty sure we were like, if you could be an animal, what animal would it be? What is in your bank account right now? What do you spend money on? Like, are you an alcoholic? Are you, you know, like we got down to hard conversations from the get go. I mean, it was everything from like, do you snort night? I will smother you with a pillow to what are your love languages?

James Mrjenovich (17:14)
yeah.

yeah.

Okay.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (17:39)
and we talked, I mean, sun up till sun down. We slept on the phone with each other. So I think that has been one of the biggest things we did. What is the first movie that we watched?

James Mrjenovich (17:49)
We watch movies together over FaceTime.

Nope.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (17:59)
It

you had to give a piece of advice to someone that was getting into a relationship with somebody that left an abusive relationship.

either somewhat recently or the last relationship that they had was abusive. If you had to give one piece of advice to that person, what would you say to them?

James Mrjenovich (18:24)
Honestly, the biggest thing is just be patient. Understand that the other one's gonna be healing. Let them do it on their timeline. If you rush it or try to push them, if it doesn't hurt them more, it's gonna make things take longer to heal. Just be patient and supportive. That's the best thing you can do for them.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (18:50)
like that's a great piece of advice and I would piggyback off that and say that healing is not linear it is it's five steps forward six steps backwards repeated

James Mrjenovich (18:59)
Healing is a roller coaster on its own.

I would just put it as let them heal on their time.

Let them figure out their timeline.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (19:15)
I think that's fair.

I think that's solid advice.

My next question, this is important. If you could have anybody play me in our movie, who would it be?

you

James Mrjenovich (19:45)
It's so horrible.

I was thinking of it, but I almost didn't want to say it.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (19:52)
Blake Lively would have to she would have to gain a few pounds though to play me. Blake Blake girl you would look stunning fluffy and I think you would make an amazing me because my husband... Ryan Reynolds you have the personality of Deadpool and Ryan Reynolds who are one in the same so

James Mrjenovich (20:08)
Ryan Reynolds will still love you.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (20:21)
I feel like we could be played by Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds.

James Mrjenovich (20:26)
The dynamics are

about the same.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (20:29)
If you combine like You can't even say the notebook with us because the notebook is very like on and off like toxic love like they fight a lot and we don't fight If you could combine a really romantic movie with a Couple that roasts each other like 24 -7 like we roast each other all the time like

There are five love languages. The sixth one is roasting my husband. Being roasted by my husband. If we love all of those love languages.

James Mrjenovich (21:07)
words of affirmation, and then there's us.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (21:10)
There's words of affirmation with a little spice. And I feel like that's us. Yeah. So I feel like Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds can do that.

or Blake Lively and like Jensen Ackles.

James Mrjenovich (21:29)
I probably have to lean more towards that.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (21:31)
You give the Jensen Ackles vibes and I'm not disappointed by

yeah, that's our story in a nutshell and

I would say to anybody out there, if you're still looking for your partner, don't, number one, don't settle. And number two, find someone that is your best friend before your spouse. Because I feel like our marriage would not work nearly as well as it does if we weren't best friends. Like best friends.

like.

James Mrjenovich (22:13)
I absolutely agree with that. Definitely try and start off on a friendship level. Don't jump directly into romance.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (22:25)
Like no, not even friendship. Best friends. When I tell you this man is my best friend, like he knows things about me, nobody should know about me.

But we keep it interesting.

James Mrjenovich (22:44)
That's a two -way street, but I also finish your thoughts a lot. You'll be mid -sentence and I'll finish it.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (22:48)
Yeah, it's it's creepy. It's very creepy. We have like telepathy. We're we're odd. We're very I feel like I could probably do this podcast every day with him. And we would never run out of things to talk about. Like when we hang up this podcast, when we're done with this podcast, we're I'm gonna walk to our bedroom. I'm in my office currently. I'm gonna walk to my bedroom.

where he is and we're gonna keep talking until he has to go to bed very soon for work in the morning. But we're gonna keep talking. Post -production is going to have to wait. Anyway.

James Mrjenovich (23:27)
Yeah, I only got five hours till I gotta get up.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (23:41)
Thank you for coming on the Second Chance Queen podcast. Is there anything else that you would like to add, darling?

James Mrjenovich (23:48)
Just trust your gut if you think they're the person.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (23:55)
they're definitely your person. And I would say...

end things on a positive note don't ever settle and don't think that you're asking for too much from somebody if you're asking too much you're just asking the wrong person because this man he thinks I walk on water he has me on this pedestal and I swear guys I'm not perfect but if you ask him he will lie through his teeth and tell you that I'm the most perfect human being out there

I'm not, I'm flawed, but don't ask him because he won't find any flaws for you. I'll tell you. But he is the type of person that will, if I can give 5%, he will give 105 to add to my 5. And is everything that I ever dreamed of in a partner and more. I'm trying not to make you cry on this podcast.

But they're out there. They're out there and find your best friend.

James Mrjenovich (25:08)
Thank you for having me out here. I'll come on any time to entertain him.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (25:12)
I feel like we're gonna have to have a weekly segment like husband lessons with second chance queens

need to find like a cool name, but you can give husband classes I trust you with that But

James Mrjenovich (25:29)
trust me too much with other people.

Kristianna Mrjenovich (25:32)
do. You did. You did awesome. Thank you for sensing yourself today. Thank you for coming on, darling. I love you. And this is Second Chance Queen, your Second Chance Queen, Kristianna Mrjenovich, signing off of episode two. So stay tuned for episode three, where we will be.

James Mrjenovich (25:36)
you

Kristianna Mrjenovich (25:59)
starting to, I think, brew some tea. So stay tuned, because I think we're going to have a tea party.