My husband and I went viral on TikTok in our 40s and 60s

“You look so cute when you swing,” one commenter wrote in one of our first posts.

Oh no. I was swinging again.

I was sitting at our grand piano next to my husband, Joshua, singing into a phone mounted on a selfie stick balanced precariously on the piano. I thought I was just playing, but somewhere during the song my body started moving on its own – and someone noticed.

Panic set in before I could figure out what the commenter had actually written. I felt hives starting to develop on my skin and ironically, I started rocking even harder to calm myself down.

But wait, did they say it was cute?

To understand why a compliment made me panic, you have to understand what I’ve learned over the course of my life not rock.

At 25, I was tired of living by other people’s rules. So I started a business.

I had spent years trying to convince academia to take me seriously. A woman composer in a field clearly dominated by men? Name three female composers – I dare you. What was my journey supposed to look like? I discovered that presenting was half the battle, so I constructed my own rulebook: what to wear, who to talk to, when to speak, when to push back, and when to stay silent.

The rules always made me feel like I could succeed. They are part of my survival strategy as an autistic person. The problem is that people don’t always follow the same rules. Worse still, the rules change without warning.

So I became an entrepreneur and made my own rules.

But building a business required another mask: the mask of I know what I’m doing. The mask of I’m not terrified; I am thriving.

I lived with this mask for 15 years because masking was always what I did best.

My 40th birthday arrived with muted bugles. He looked remarkably like size 39, only with a few more white hairs. (They looked blonde on me – I’m lucky.)

By then, my business was stable enough that I could step back and return to music with Joshua. My lovely husband is 24 years older than me and perhaps the only person I’ve never needed to mask with.

We formed a duo called Take Two and, on the recommendation of one of my students, started posting videos on TikTok. We played in our living room, always with a cup of tea nearby. There were missed notes, strange facial expressions, and frequent moments where one of us laughed hard enough to completely derail the song. And more double chins than one could imagine (the camera angle is not kind to us).

The videos started going viral.

We received millions of views.

People started asking for songs. At last count, we had received 1,897 requests and gained over 100,000 subscribers. Naturally, my hyper-organized autistic self keeps every request on a color-coded spreadsheet that I update every 48 hours. So yes, this number is absolutely correct.

It didn’t surprise me that people liked the music. Joshua and I are professional musicians, after all. What surprised me was what viewers said they liked about us.

“I love you all. I would love to have parents like you,” one person wrote.

“You make me feel safe and loved. I don’t know how to explain it! Thank you for being you,” another commented.

“This song sounds different when you’re older. Honestly, it makes me nostalgic for something I never had.”

One viewer wrote that if we were their parents, they would “feel 100% loved and happy.” Others asked us to adopt them, begged us to never divorce, or told us that watching our interactions with each other made them believe in love.

And the comment about my swinging was just the beginning.

Another viewer said he loved my “Betty Boop” voice – the high-pitched, animated voice that I had long tried to hide in conversation because I was afraid it would make me seem flirtatious, too feminine or unserious.

Other people called me motherly and warm. I’m not a mother and my warmth has often felt like an Achilles’ heel: too enthusiastic, too familiar too. a lot. Yet somehow this part of me was reaching strangers through a phone screen.

One of our most viral videos is a 45-second cover of Audrey Hobert’s “Sue Me.” We recorded it while I was wearing pinstriped pajamas, on day three of the stomach flu, with no makeup, in one take. I ran to the bathroom immediately afterwards.

But for those 45 seconds, I was really happy – and that’s what the video showed.

“You are so beautiful and in love.”

“Your pajamas are so cute.”

“You give me hope for a love like this.”

I would never dream of filming or performing while sick, in pajamas or without makeup. Yet that’s what made the video real, believable and – dare I say it – on.

Seventy percent of our subscribers are under 20 years old. Think about it: 70%. We are a middle-aged couple who sing requests on our piano. When I first saw this number in our analytics, I thought it must be an error. I kept refreshing the page.

Then it started to make sense.

Most of our viewers grew up surrounded by edited versions of life: perfectly photoshopped family portraits, filters, auto-tuning, live speech correction at concerts, and now AI. Meanwhile, an “old” couple imperfectly and happily singing familiar songs were called “the only real thing I saw today.”

The irony is not lost on me: this “real thing” exists on social media, a place known for presenting perfected versions of ourselves. I began to wonder if our young viewers had inherited a world already wearing a mask – and were simply trying to get a glimpse behind it.

At first, I thought they had misinterpreted me – or that they were only seeing a tiny part of me. Like maybe I didn’t look so bad on a small screen? But when thousands of people independently described me as comforting, motherly, calming and real, it became harder to ignore.

Of course, viewers said they loved the performances, but I was even more thrilled that they reacted to us — the way we looked at each other, the way we laughed through our mistakes, and the moments I probably would have deleted before.

The characteristics I had tried to correct for decades were precisely the ones that strangers interpreted as trustworthy, comforting, and familiar.

I spent my life trying to protect myself for other people: predictable, professional, not too emotional, not too feminine, not too enthusiastic and, above all, not visibly autistic. I firmly believed that others would only feel comfortable if I presented myself and acted in the right way.

One hundred thousand followers have not undone decades of masking. I always think it’s important to make the people around me feel comfortable – to a certain extent. There is a difference between consideration and erasurealthough I’m still learning where that line is.

What these strangers taught me is that my unmasked self is also beautiful.

I always go into rooms looking for the rules. I still panic during meetings and solve my Rubik’s Cube under the table. But now I pay attention to what’s happening around me in a new way, and I no longer assume that my panic is proof that I’ve done something wrong.

The changes I make are smaller and perhaps quieter.

What if I don’t correct this note?

What if we don’t do another take?

Every few videos I find myself moving.

The difference is that now I don’t force myself to stop.

Kari Burroughs Kraakevik is a Colorado-based writer and composer whose work explores identity, neurodivergence, and belonging. Her writing has appeared in The Colorado Sun, The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism, ColoradoBiz, ONE ART, and Empyrean Literary Magazine, among other publications. She was one of four finalists for the Women’s Fiction 2026 Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Gold Rush Literary Award. However, her favorite thing to do is perform with her husband, Joshua Rich, as part of the musical duo Take Two. You can find out more about Take Two on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. To learn more about Kari, visit her website.

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