You might not remember your first sip of soda, but Ethan Plath will never forget it.
On Tuesday, TLC will premiere its new six-part series,Welcome to Plathville, which follows Kim Plath, a naturopathic practitioner, and Barry Plath, a transportation planner. The couple raised their children — Ethan, 21, Micah, 18, Moriah, 17, Lydia, 15, Isaac, 13, Amber, 10, Cassia, 8, and Mercy, 6 — on a 55-acre farm in a rural part of south Georgia and have largely abstained from technology in the 21st century world. (There’s also daughter Hosanna, 20, a violinist who tours full-time with her pianist husband and lives in Ohio.)
At the center of it all is Ethan’s relationship with his wife Olivia, 21, a destination wedding photographer originally from Virginia — and the tension that arises between the two households as under her roof, Olivia introduces Ethan to things like sugar, television, alcohol and social media.
In PEOPLE’s exclusive sneak peek at the season premiere, Ethan says the past six months of marriage “have definitely been the best six months of my life.”
“I mean, independence is nice and all, but then to have someone to share it with is just very, very nice,” he adds.
The Plath family.TLC
Olivia Plath and Ethan Plath.TLC
Olivia, meanwhile, admits that Ethan’s upbringing continues to surprise her, even though she was also brought up in a fairly conservative home.
“When Ethan and I first got married, I was really shocked at the differences in how we grew up. I would make a movie reference or start singing a song and he would say, ‘I have no clue what that is. Where is that from?'” she says. “It was just a good reminder that even though we both grew up in conservative home-schooled families, people do things so different.”
“I took him to his first basketball game, I took him to his first time at the movies,” she adds. “Since we’ve gotten married, it’s been a long process of introducing him to all these different things and just letting him get his feet wet and seeing what he thinks about stuff.”
One cultural cornerstone to which she’s opened his eyes? The beloved sitcom,Friends.
“I really had no idea what it would taste like,” he says. “I liked it, I really did like it. I saved my little can. I’m going to write the date on it: 20 years old — my first Coke.”
TLC
But Olivia also touches on the challenges they’ve faced since moving in together.
“When we got married and we moved in here and we had alcohol in the home, that was a big source of tension,” she says. “We’d want to go out for ice cream and that would create conflict because then it would be, ‘Well, you shouldn’t be eating sugar.’ And we’d be like, ‘Well, we’re adults. We can make that decision ourselves.'”
“Obviously, we’re our own family and we’re going to do things the way we choose to do them,” she adds. “And we allow a lot of different things in our home that his parents wouldn’t, and that’s just a personal choice.”
Welcome to Plathvillepremieres Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET on TLC.
source: people.com
