Mother: Joni (51)

Daughter: Carli (21)

Shady Point - Alexander City, AL

“The Tooth Fairies”

Nestled in the heart of Alabama, in the quaint town of Shady Point live Joni and Carli, Southern Belle mama and daughter ready to ring in all of life’s moments side-by-side. They’re beautiful, funny, sweet-as-sweet-tea ladies with adorable drawls and infectious personalities. The duo is infamous in their country hamlet as the mother/daughter who run a dental practice together. One part the incredible small town characters à la Schitt’s Creek and the other part small town gossip set within a dental practice like Trudy’s Salon in Steel Magnolias, this mom and daughter offers a setting lifted from a sitcom. Since Carli was born, she and her mother have been attached at the hip. Mother Joni, and her ex-husband were divorced when Carli was very young. Joni fought for full custody of her two vivacious children, Jonathan, now 22, and Carli, 21, and while the three of them run as a pack, a special bond has always persisted between mother and daughter.  

Joni is one of the town’s five working dentists and owns her own dental practice. Not surprising, mom’s mini-me followed in her footsteps and Carli works as mom’s lab technician, designing and building out veneers and implants for their patients. Every day, before they arrive at work, they call each other and decide which color scrubs to wear to the office. They’re scrubs match every day, without fail. Last year, Carli moved out of her mom’s house for the first time and bought a house down the road, despite the separation there are still no boundaries with coming and going. It’s not uncommon for mom or daughter to show up at one another’s house to make final decisions on outfits for the day, or just crawl into bed with one another. They have even gone as far as decorating each other’s houses with the same paint color, fixtures and tile. There are very few boundaries, and they admit, “we have a bad habit of standing in a mirror next to one another naked and comparing ourselves. We critique each other before we go out and if we don’t look coordinated, we change!”  

It gets even stranger though. Joni and Carli go to the bathroom together. Not weird? They use the same stall at the same time. Even stranger: since she was a little girl, mom still cleans the seat for her daughter and lets her go first! They own five dogs between them (the dogs are sisters!) and they have a cleaning ritual of bathing with their pooches together. Yes, mom and daughter in their birthday suits washing five dogs at the same time in the shower together. It’s a sight to behold. They also share a horse and show the horse together. Carli was a debutante growing up, competed in pageants and rode horses competitively.

Growing up, Carli and her brother Jonathan spent a lot of time with Joni’s gay best friend Eddy and his current partner Daniel. Together, the five of them formed their own unorthodox family. Daniel is a hairdresser and he does Joni and Carli’s hair. In turn, Joni is Eddy and Daniel’s dentist. Having two gay uncles was a God-send for all of them but especially for Jonathan, who came out in high school, something he was nervous about doing in the heart of the Bible Belt. Luckily, his mother, sister and gay uncles celebrated who he is and encouraged him to pursue his life authentically. 

Currently, Jonathan lives with his boyfriend Shay in Birmingham but drives into Alexander City to work at Joni’s practice four days a week. At work, he says Carli and Joni are quite literally on top of each other. The moment they finish with one of their patients, they come running into the other room to check on each other. Some of the other employees think it’s bizarre but they don’t seem to care. Their bond is unbreakable. Even as life changes and Joni and Carli get more involved in their own personal relationships, the bond remains super strong.

Like mother, like daughter, both of these ladies are in relationships with balding men! Daniel and Joni live together and have been together for fourteen years. They dated in secret while the kids were young, but when Jonathan and Carli were old enough they confessed that Daniel was a boyfriend. They’re not married, but their relationship seems to be strong regardless. Daniel, Joni’s boyfriend works a lot and doesn’t spend a ton of time with the dynamic mother-daughter duo, but Scott, Carli’s boyfriend of two years, says Joni is practically the third member of their relationship. He doesn’t love that his girlfriend’s mom picked out his house just down the road from her. The entire buying process was handled exclusively by Carli and her mother. “I would’ve liked to have a bigger part of that,” he admits.

From the moment Joni wraps up work on Thursday afternoon, she joins Carli and Scott on their weekend excursions, whether or not Scott likes it. They go to the local lake together, they go out for drinks together, they run errands together and they eat together. There’s hardly any alone time for the young couple. It’s hard to determine whether it’s Joni third-wheeling Scott and Carli’s relationship or Scott third-wheeling theirs. 

In the near future, more landmark moments are bound to happen including an engagement. About two months ago, Scott went to a jeweler to customize a ring, which he believes will be ready in the next few weeks! Upon learning about the potential engagement, Carli and her mother instantly started planning the wedding, and again, Scott is left on the sidelines. Of course, Uncle Eddy and Uncle Daniel will absolutely be involved in the wedding planning as well. Not only does Scott have a mother-in-law to contend with, but he also has two opinionated gay uncles! Being the gentleman that he is, he swears he doesn’t care what the wedding looks like as long as Carli walks down the aisle to him, but will that change? Can Joni and Carli’s un-weatherable bond keep up with the ever-changing seasons of Carli’s new life?