Where is Ruby Franke's husband today?

It was in August 2023 when the whole world turned upside down for the Frankes when family vlogger Ruby Franke was arrested for child abuse along with her business partner Jodi Hildebrandt. The truth is, as explored in Lifetime’s ‘Mormon Mother Gone Wrong: The Ruby Franke Story,” the former had a YouTube channel before she got into business, but she was almost always shrouded in suspicion. However, that wasn’t the case for her husband, Kevin Franke, despite being married parents of six children and sharing a home for over fifteen years, leaving many wondering about his reality.

Kevin Franke was once his wife’s supporter

While not much is publicly available about Kevin’s early years or upbringing, we do know that he is a proud native of Ogden, Utah, and has spent most of his life surrounded by strong Mormon beliefs. So it’s no surprise that he fell in love with the accounting major and fellow member of the LDS Church Ruby Griffiths While studying civil engineering at university, he decided to take the biggest leap of faith with her. The couple tied the knot in a beautifully intimate ceremony in December 2000, after which they blissfully welcomed six children into their world: Shari, Chad, Abby, Julie, Russell and Eve.

Nevertheless, this family only came into the spotlight in 2015, when Ruby launched a (now defunct) YouTube channel called 8Passengers to document their daily lives. Little did they know that they would soon amass not only millions of loyal subscribers, but also everyday activists, all coming to a head in 2020 when fans became deeply concerned about their home environment. Numerous well-wishers even signed an online petition asking local child protective services to investigate this family over claims of strict household rules and possible extreme neglect.

Kevin himself was featured in many of the YouTube videos raising these concerns, but he wasn’t even in the picture when Ruby was finally captured in the summer of 2023. Records show the couple had split more than a year earlier . her directive, even though he desperately wanted to continue working on the concerns as a family, and it quickly led to him losing contact with everyone. He was seemingly willing to do anything for those he cared for as long as they were happy, not knowing that it would change their entire lives and leave him alone to pick up most of the broken pieces.

Kevin Franke believes Jodi Hildebrandt is the catalyst for everything

While Kevin had told investigators that he loved his wife and did not want to say anything to incriminate her during his first interview after her arrest, he changed his mind just two weeks later. By this point, much more information had come to light about the abuse his wife had come forward, leading him to tell investigators that he had not been in contact with anyone in his family for more than a year. He then stated that this all started after they started working with a marriage counselor named Jodi Hildebrandt, who specialized in addiction counseling and worked primarily with LDS Church families.

According to Kevin’s statements to police, he and Ruby had split “because of the way I was dealing with my wife and some of my own addictions…with pornography.” However, his lawyer has since claimed that he was never addicted to pornography, but Jodi had somehow managed to convince them that he was, adding that he was “manipulated” every step of the way. The worst actually came after Jodi became Ruby’s business partner and moved into their Springville home following the breakup of her own marriage, which he said was “just hell, psychological hell.”

Kevin even went so far as to say that before their divorce, he had rules imposed on him in his own home due to Ruby and Jodi’s business partnership. He then claimed that his wife actually changed after she became involved with Jodi’s ConneXions, a life coaching service she founded in 2007 and mainly described as a “religious cult.” This led to their separation within the home, but he decided to go ahead with a legal separation in December 2023, four months after Ruby and Jodi’s arrest.

Kevin Franke is now trying his best to get ahead in life

With Kevin and Ruby in the middle of a divorce process, he is now trying his best to gain custody of his four youngest children; his eldest two are already adults and are building a new life for themselves. As if that weren’t enough, this former Brigham Young University professor has since also dedicated himself to convincing lawmakers to change the way police and the Utah Division of Child and Family Services investigate abuse cases. Although claims had been made against Ruby since 2020, it wasn’t until the last year before her arrest that their numbers increased, and yet, he claims, they did nothing.

Kevin even claimed that this was the reason Jodi was able to take advantage of his family, saying that she knew the childcare system like the back of her hand and knew all she had to do was keep quiet. “Don’t answer the door, don’t talk to the authorities, DCFS or the police,” he said during a hearing in March 2024. “Just stay silent. As long as everyone remains silent, the case will be closed automatically within a certain number of days, usually thirty.” It’s actually unclear what Kevin’s relationship with his children is like at this point, but he and his lawyers have made it clear that they are doing their best to ensure he gets custody quickly. After all, he was never charged with any crime because there was no evidence of abuse against him.