“There are lots of things about the queer community that I love and there are lots of things I don’t love. I think there tends to be a big emphasis on looks and size,” Angela Ibrahim says in this week’s StoryCorps.

“You tend to see people who look alike together. And if there are two people who don’t look alike – It’s Virginia and I. I’m six feet tall and I’m a big kid. Virginia is five (foot), five (inches), small and blond. So, we don’t look alike.”

There are other differences too: Angela is black and Virginia is white.

Angela grew up in the suburbs, while Virginia grew up in the city.

There are similarities as well. Both women work in higher education and both have brothers who have been to prison.

Angela says for a while after they met, though, she thought they could never be together because of their differences.

In this week’s StoryCorps, recorded at the Chicago Cultural Center, where the women were visiting from Wisconsin, Angela and Virginia express fear and excitement about their impending wedding and their families’ reactions.

“I never really envisioned myself marrying someone,” Virginia says. “And even though I didn’t have a vision for it, I know that when I’m with you, I feel like it’s gonna be okay…It just makes sense, and I trust that.”