Were Jodi Hildebrandt & Ruby Franke in a Secret Relationship? The Influencer’s Daughter Claimed They Were ‘Physical’ While ‘Living Lies’
StyleCaster Editors
More than two years after their arrests, Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt’s relationship is being reexamined in the new Netflix documentary Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story.
Jodi Hildebrandt was the founder of life-coaching company ConneXions while Ruby spearheaded the ‘8 Passengers’ channel, where she gave parenting advice. As members of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the two often intertwined their faith into their advice. One of those beliefs included anti-LGBTQ sentiments, but those who interacted on a daily basis with Jodi and Ruby claimed that there was a deeper connection between the two. “There’s been some talk that she might be lesbian, but then some of the comments she made were [about] if you were LGBTQ then that was an addiction,” a former client of Jodi’s said in the documentary. “It could be recovered from, but that’s a shameful thing.”
Related: Where All of Ruby Franke’s Kids Are Now After Claiming Their Mom ‘Ruined’ Their Childhood
Jodi and Ruby were arrested and accused of “causing or permitting serious physical injury to the victims in three different ways: (1) a combination of multiple physical injuries or torture, (2) starvation or malnutrition that jeopardizes life, and (3) causing severe emotional harm” after two of Jodi’s kids were found to be malnourished and sporting open wounds. They are currently serving prison sentences at the Utah State Correctional Facility in separate wings after both of them pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse.
Were Jodi Hildebrandt and Ruby Franke in a relationship?
While Jodi Hildebrandt and Ruby Franke never addressed their relationship and have been adamant about their stances on the LGBTQ community, Franke’s eldest daughter, Shari Franke, wrote down instances where she was suspicious of what was going down with her mother and the therapist.
“I certainly got weird vibes from Jodi and Ruby,” Shari said on Good Morning America in Jan. 2025. “I don’t think it’s normal at all that a therapist would move into her client’s home. I was moving out to college, and I hadn’t even left the house yet and she is in my room and in my bed.”
“Ruby tried to be secretive about it, and so I don’t know all the details,” Shari said. “The vibes I was getting was that something was strange between them.”
In the memoir The House of My Mother, she wrote about a time when she found her bedroom to be surrounded by “candles” and the “scent of lavender of vanilla” and said that the room was being used by her mother and Jodi for “massages.” She claimed she saw Ruby walk out of her room with “her hair messy, her cheeks flushed, and her robe hastily tied.”
“Two women who preached ‘Truth’ while living lies. Who condemned queerness very publicly in their ConneXion videos, while embodying it privately. In my room. On my bed, most likely.”
She also recalled that she found messages on her computer “that confirmed for me the truth about the nature of her relationship with Jodi and how it had spilled over into the physical. Ruby, expressing her frustration about having to cater to Jodi’s needs for physical affection without getting anything in return.”
However, when she was asked by GMA if the relationship turned romantic, Shari said, “I never saw anything specific about that,” she said, and that she was “not sure” if they were more than friends.
In the doc, Ruby’s now-ex-husband Kevin Franke talked about how Ruby would sleep with Jodi to prevent her night terrors, but that stemmed from a “possession mode.”
“They started sleeping in the same bed,” he shared. “Basically, there were all these rules now placed on me. I couldn’t come into the kitchen to eat until Ruby gave me permission. The upstairs where Jodi roamed was completely off limits. They’d just go up and lock themselves in the room for four or five hours. Then they’d come out and they’d just be on cloud nine. Then Ruby would share with me, like, ‘She had this amazing vision!’”
