Zach Zarembinski and Isabelle Richard were separately admitted to the ICU at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minn., when they were teenagers in 2018. Zach, just 18 at the time, was suffering from a brain injury that occurred while he was playing high school football. Isabelle, then 16, was hospitalized following a car accident. After a week-long coma, Zach woke up and participated in a news interview about his accident and road to recovery. The news segment played on the TV in Isabelle’s room while she was still in a coma, catching her mother Esther’s attention. She reached out to Zach for advice about Isabell’s devastating car accident. He shared kind words of hope and wisdom, assuring the family that their daughter would survive. A few days later, Isabelle woke up and slowly began to recover. The two brain-injured teens met and snapped a smiling photo together, but while their mothers kept in contact, the teens did not. Finally, the two families met for dinner, and the rest, as they say, is history. Zach got Isabell’s number, they started dating, and now, nearly seven years later, they’re headed for the altar. The couple’s journeys to recovery were very similar, with both having parts of their skulls removed to relieve brain swelling. “It’s opposite sides of our brain, so it’s kind of like we complement each other in that way,” said Isabelle. “Things I’m bad at, he’s good at.” The couple now host a podcast together called Hope in Healing.
