RENO, Nev. - Ethan Clift and I had spoken on the phone just once before he invited me to spend an entire week with him and his wife, Allison Clift-Jennings, at their home in Reno, Nevada.

It was both unexpected and unprecedented.

I had contacted Ethan out of the blue via email, expressing interest in reporting his and Allie's love story, which I first learned about in his Ted Talk titled "Have you met your soulmate?"

Seven years into their marriage, Allie, who was assigned the male gender at birth based on her anatomy, revealed her true, female identity to Ethan. Three years later, Ethan transitioned, too, from female to male. Today, they are both transgender, have been married 12 years and are trying to get pregnant with a child of their own.

During our first phone call, Ethan and I quickly bonded over our sheltered upbringings in conservative, Christian households.

We both grew up behind the "Orange Curtain" just south of Los Angeles. Only recently has Orange County adopted "purple" politics and seen increased diversity of its booming population. Growing up, my exposure to the LGBTQ community was limited to the few closeted gay boys in my high school drama class. It wasn't until my early 20s that I became aware of the gender and sexuality spectrums.

Ethan's experiences were much more intense. He opened up about attending reparative therapy (also known as conversion therapy) and explained why he and Allie gradually walked away from the church and their conservative roots. She was raised in a similar environment in Reno and felt pressured to uphold a faith-driven lifestyle from a young age. Her two older brothers are also part of the LGBTQ community; they came out as gay before Allie came out as trans.

I was tempted to lie for the sake of securing Ethan's trust, but his unsolicited vulnerability demanded honesty in return. I admitted that I'm still a church-goer and maintain values that tend to align more with conservative policies than liberal ones. Ethan responded with a simple and sincere, "that's awesome."

During our next conversation, he graciously extended the offer to host me - a gesture too hospitable and too ideal to pass up.

When friends and family found out I would be canceling my hotel reservation to stay in Allie and Ethan's home, they were supportive and wary. My parents offered me their hotel points in case I needed to rebook my stay and encouraged me to lie about a family emergency if I needed a way out. Friends asked to pray for me over the phone.

The image on Google Earth doesn't do Allie and Ethan's home justice. Its all-brick facade is made even more charming by a sage wreath on the front door. Christmas lights stay up year-round and their two, small dogs keep watch in the front window. I could hear them whining over the sound of the radio as I pulled up.

After months of planning, the reality of the week ahead was finally in front of me.

I put the car in park and reached for my keys, paused for a moment, then reached for my phone instead. After pretending to send a lengthy text with the car still running, I figured it was time to leave the perceived comfort of my rented Toyota Camry and embrace whatever awkward moments awaited me behind that wreath.

Still, I needed another minute. I clung to the sides of the driver's seat like the few flurries that survived the drive over clung to the corners of my windshield. It was early March and winter was on its last leg in Reno.

The prospect of spending a week with complete strangers is daunting, but the paralyzing hesitation I felt in that moment could only partially be blamed on the concerns I had formed before my trip or even by the worries friends and family had unknowingly imposed on me with their prayers and hotel points.

It was rooted much deeper and had been steeping in my soul for years and was now permeating my central nervous system, triggering an anxiety most likely caused by a subconscious fear of Ethan and Allie's transgender identities.

It was eye-opening to realize that transphobia can taint a well-intentioned reporter with a well-intentioned background. Suddenly, I wasn't sure who I was more uncertain about - Allie and Ethan or myself.

I approached the front door after stalling for 10 minutes. Before I could knock, Ethan stood in the doorway.

"Hey Noelle!" he said, welcoming me inside.

He was wide-eyed in both an excited and nervous way. I immediately recognized his larger-than-life smile and jade-green eyes that disappeared behind folds of crinkled skin as he grinned even wider.

Allie stood behind him with a closed-mouth smile.

"Come on in," she said, her arms outstretched.

We hugged, and she offered me a cup of tea.

They ushered me to the living room where we talked for over an hour before grabbing our coats and heading out to what would be the first of many shared meals together that week. Ethan sat to my left; Allie, to my right.

"I apologize, I'm a little under the weather," she went on, massaging her collarbone. "That's why my voice is so low today. I hate it."

Throughout the course of our conversation, she continued clearing her throat in such a way that seemed intrinsically female. Her hands, though larger than most women thanks to her 5-foot-10 stature, moved delicately from her chest back to her cup, and her voice, though lower that day because of a cold, was soft and feminine.

Ethan is several inches shorter, but his body is sturdy from years of playing soccer (he was a midfielder on Columbia University's team during his college years). His jaw, though still awaiting more facial hair, has a squareness to it and I'm told is looking more masculine every day. Only a slight curve of his chest and hips are noticeable from underneath his black polo and blue jeans.

"This is the fifth year of my transition," Allie explained. "And Ethan is heading into second."

Ethan was born Ashley Clift - a name I came across two years ago when I first discovered his Ted Talk during a late-night quest for relationship advice on the Internet.

Allie was born Eric Jennings. Her decision to go by a name starting with the letter "A" (like Ashley) and Ethan's choice to go by one starting with the letter "E" (like Eric) is a total coincidence.

When she and Ethan met in 2007, she was a 30-year-old cisgender man with two small children from a previous marriage and professional aspirations in the startup space. They met online but instead of connecting through a traditional dating website, they connected based on Myers-Briggs compatibility - a personality test based on a person's perceptions and judgements about the world. Ethan is an INFJ (introversion + intuition + feeling + judging); Allie is an ENFP (extroversion + intuition + feeling + perceiving).

Just six months after their first date, they married in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.

"One day...I was told my spouse was transgender," Ethan revealed to a live audience while giving his Ted Talk in 2017 at the University of Reno, Nevada. Today, it has more than 3 million views on YouTube.

At the time, he was still female-presenting.

In the fall of 2014, Allie came out to Ethan as a woman.

"And my first response was, 'You've got to be fucking kidding me,'" Ethan shared with his audience.

In an act of total selflessness, Allie left the decision up to Ethan, pledging to forfeit her desire to transition if it would end their marriage. Ethan, just as selflessly, declined her offer, and in the fall of 2016, Allie came out publicly after nearly one year of hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

Ethan went on to explain the fall from privilege he experienced as a white, middle-class heterosexual female, at the time, who was now married to another woman.

"What does that mean about my sexuality? Does that mean that I'm now a lesbian? Because when we go out, of course, people see us and they just think we're a lesbian couple. That's not exactly accurate," he said.

Ethan shocked the audience again when he said:

"And now I stand here today the proud wife of a transgender woman, and she's still my soulmate."

He argued that the depth of the soul goes beyond gender identity, and asked the audience if they could recognize their own soulmates apart from any external markers or societal definitions.

Last Christmas, I rediscovered his talk in yet another late-night YouTube binge. It had been two years since he gave it, and I couldn't help but wonder: were they still married?

Based on the fact that global divorce rates have more than doubled in the past four decades and that nearly 50 percent of all U.S. marriages fail, my guess was no. Plus, Allie had already been through one divorce with a woman whom she married in her early 20s.

I became even more convinced that it hadn't worked out when I couldn't find Ashley on social media.

Then I found this:

Just months after giving his Ted Talk, Ethan came out as transgender in the spring of 2017.

He and Allie are now 36 and 41, respectively, run two successful businesses, continue coparenting their two children, Ben and Lauren, and are working on growing their family this summer.

Very few moments of my life, thus far, have felt as predestined as walking into Allie and Ethan's living room that Sunday afternoon. Apparently, even their Yorkshire Terriers, Ada and Mercy, could sense the providence of my arrival.

"It's so weird," Ethan said. "The day you got here, the dogs didn't bark. They cried. It's like they knew you were supposed to be here."

The rest of the week was like one long therapy session - for all three us. We discussed everything from the reasons Allie's first marriage didn't work out to our mutual frustrations with the church and its politics to the details of the summer Ethan's mom killed herself in 2015.

After-dinner conversation topics ranged from which color tile they should use for the new fireplace backsplash (gray or white) to the post-op logistics of where to recover from future gender-affirming surgeries (New York or Arizona).

They're still undecided on both - leaning gray.

I relished a week spent in a home free from the noise of a television (they don't own one). In its place are songs from their favorite playlists, the yapping of their beloved pups and the clucking of several chickens laying eggs in a coop in the backyard.

As if inviting me into their home wasn't intimate enough, I attended a therapy session with Ethan and was even invited to observe their weekly round of hormone injections, which are done in the upstairs bathroom.

Ethan was up first. He's only been on testosterone for about seven months and still needs Allie to inject him. She, on the other hand, injects herself. It takes about 15 seconds for the solution to penetrate the fatty part of the upper thigh.

The physical process of transitioning is often referred to as a "second puberty."

In a letter to transgender patients, Dr. Madeline Deutsch, the director of transgender care at the University of California, San Francisco, says there are four areas where one can expect changes to occur as hormone therapy progresses - physical, emotional, sexual and reproductive.

Just like teen puberty, the process of transitioning cannot and should not be rushed, she writes. HRT is a lifelong commitment.

"My body will never stop producing testosterone," Allie said. "I'll be doing this into my 90s."

Allie and Ethan are at different stages of their second puberty, and it shows. She acts almost like a mentor, coaching him through the tough moments of fatigue, sexual frustration, irritability and isolation.

I witnessed a few of these moments throughout the course of the week. His transition adds another layer of exhaustion to an already demanding work schedule as a lobbyist and the founder of Clift & Co., his startup company that provides services to help develop other organizations.

On top of that, Ethan is drained emotionally by the strains of being misgendered (being mistakenly or deliberately identified as the wrong gender), which happens most days. At dinners out, the three of us were referred to as "ladies" by the hostess and server. His breasts are a dead giveaway.

"I wear a binder, but without it I'm like a 34-D," he said.

Eventually, Ethan will undergo top surgery to remove his breasts, but the prospect of pregnancy is, of course, being taken into consideration.

Allie rarely gets misgendered anymore, except on the phone. In 2017, she underwent facial feminization surgery, including a brow bone reduction, rhinoplasty and hair transplant, which was performed in Spain. However, she still faces challenges based on her gender identity in the workplace.

As the founder and CEO of a blockchain solutions startup called Filament for the past seven years, she's been leading the company through financial and organizational transitions as she navigates her own. Side comments and little quips regarding her appearance, specifically the way she dresses, aren't frequent but happen every once in a while. The sniping, she said, that never took place when she presented male.

Plans for future gender confirming surgeries (GCS) are still to be determined for both of them and come second to plans for the baby.

The deal was for Allie to bank her sperm before she began her medical transition in 2015 so that she and Ethan could have a shot at getting pregnant post-transition. Now that Ethan has started his medical transition, it makes the process even more complicated.

This summer, they are giving in vitro fertilization (IVF) another go. Ethan will most likely carry the baby, but they've also considered going the surrogate route. They only have two frozen embryos left - a girl and a boy.

"I really hope these two frozen embryos make it because this is just going to suck otherwise," Ethan said when the topic came up.

And if they don't, Ethan and Allie said they will consider adoption and foster care as alternate options. Or, they'll just get more dogs.

"An entire dogsledding team of Yorkies," Ethan joked.

I stayed in the guest bedroom adjacent to Allie and Ethan's bedroom, which doubles as a future nursery, complete with a basket of baby clothes (a mix of boys and girls) and a changing table. But the reality is, a baby might not be in the cards.

Still, Ethan and Allie are realistically hopeful, and are planning for success just as much as failure, a coping strategy they both practice as entrepreneurs. Plans to travel internationally and possibly move to New York City stay the same, regardless of what happens.

"Family has said things that kind of feel insulting to me," Ethan said. "Things like, 'Your life's going to change a lot. Like, you're not going to be able to go as fast as you guys do.'"

Allie has no plans to give up riding motorcycles, a passion that intensified since her transition. Currently, she's training for desert dirt bike racing in the women's class, and her first race is in September.

Allie is a classic biker babe, with a sleek set of all-black gear (her signature color) and a killer ride. She sprung for the Ducati - the Rolls-Royce of the motorcycle world - twice. One, she rides; the other is in repair following her accident.

Last summer, Allie was hit by a drunken driver right around the time she and Ethan were first trying to get pregnant.

"I had just finished a 100-mile ride," she said. "I was less than a mile from home when I was hit."

She broke her pelvis and spent weeks recovering.

"Eric was always very stable," Ethan shared during his therapy session. "But Allie is a little bit more of a risk-taker."

Weekly EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing) psychotherapy treatments are helping him psychologically transition and leave Ashley's emotional scars behind. The treatments combine rapid eye movements with emotional recall to transform the connotation of past traumatic experiences, like the tragic loss of his mom.

Allie's riskiness reminds Ethan of his mom's recklessness, which he said tends to trigger a flight response.

"If I take it at face value, it's like I need to run; I need to get the hell out of here fast," he said.

For many, it's unfathomable why they would chose to stay or how they could possibly make their marriage work in their new gender identities. The comments on Ethan's Ted Talk video are proof of that skepticism.

I was among the skeptics until the week I spent in Reno, not only learning about Ethan and Allie's love story but watching it unfold at the breakfast table, in the living room and on the therapists' couch. It is rare beyond the fact that they both identify as transgender.

They are profoundly and perhaps counter-culturally in love, defending a marriage that has endured back-to-back transitions, the death of a parent, a near-death accident and the ongoing fight for another child.

Contrary to what some other Christians might say, I believe God is continuing to bless them as much as I believe he used them to bless, enrich and inform me.

To the question of their sexuality, Ethan and Allie both said they identify more so now as pansexual (capable of being attracted to many genders), although they've struggled with desiring each other in their new genders.

For Ethan, it was difficult to shake the internalized homophobia he cultivated as a Christian and embrace his spouse as a woman. For Allie, her attraction to Ethan and his masculinity wasn't instantaneous but took time to develop. She finds his new "guy smell" intoxicating.

To the question of whether or not Ethan transitioned because Allie transitioned, they respond differently. Not many people have asked that question directly, but Allie said she finds it pretty insensitive while Ethan said it's fair to ask.

"I've even questioned myself, like, did I feel that way?" he admitted. "And a lot of people won't tell you this but a lot of transgender people doubt their decision even as they're going through it."

Each year, Allie creates a playlist for Ethan to commemorate significant moments and includes a note explaining her selection of songs. For their eleventh anniversary playlist, she writes:

"I consider it a gift of gifts that I get to fall in love with you not once, but twice in this life. I don't know how I got so lucky, but I consider myself one in a million that I get this chance."

More than lucky, I observed that Allie and Ethan feel chosen. Maybe not by God but by something greater than themselves - a force with the authority to create and connect their souls, regardless of the genders of the bodies that host them.

American author Richard Bach compares the soulmate phenomenon to lock and key.

"When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we're pretending to be," he writes.

I left feeling like, I, too, am a part of this soul network, which led me into Allie and Ethan's home not only unlock the truth behind their story but to step out into a new chapter of my own.

The Latin root of trans- means across, which implies a sense of movement from one state to another. In my case, witnessing Allie and Ethan's transitions prompted a transition within myself from a subconscious state of fear to one of profound respect and admiration. I tell both Christians and non-Christians their marriage is perhaps the best example of love I've ever seen, and I'm honored to consider them teachers and friends.

"Maybe in a past life," I texted them before taking off for Los Angeles, "we were all chickens in the same coop."