Samantha Butler isn’t smiling in her wedding photos. 

She was 15 and pregnant when she says family members pressured her to marry the 25-year-old father of her child in 2010. 

The wedding party drove about 230 miles from Oklahoma City to Jasper County, Missouri, where it was legal to marry at age 15 with parental permission at the time. 

Butler remembers uncomfortable stares from people at the county courthouse on her wedding day. But nobody asked if she was OK. 

“So there’s this fresh, young girl standing here big and pregnant next to this grown adult man,” Butler said. “It was funny looks, but nobody said anything.”

Missouri has since raised the minimum marriage age to 16. In Oklahoma, it’s legal to marry at age 16 with permission from a parent, but minors who are even younger can wed with a court order from a judge in cases of pregnancy or to settle a paternity lawsuit. There are no age restrictions for marriage in Oklahoma under these circumstances.

Butler said she wants Oklahoma to ban marriage for minors. Two bills introduced in the Legislature this year would outlaw or limit marriage for people under the age of 18. But previous efforts to raise the marriage age have failed. Oklahoma has had a near-total ban on abortion since 2022 and measures that would keep young pregnant mothers from marrying haven’t advanced in the Republican-controlled Legislature. Recent statistics on child marriage are hard to find because licenses are recorded at each county courthouse. But a study from the advocacy group Unchained At Last published in 2021 ranked Oklahoma No. 5 in the nation for its rate of child marriages using data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The study estimated more than 8,400 minors in Oklahoma were married between 2000 and 2018. 

An unhappy marriage

Butler said she had a turbulent childhood living with her mother in southeast Oklahoma City. A family friend started paying attention to Butler when she was a young teenager, giving her the love and affection she says she always craved but rarely received as a child. 

By the time Butler was 14, the man was sleeping in her bedroom, Butler said. 

Butler became pregnant and said family members told her she needed to get married or else she and her baby could be placed into foster care. Butler’s mother told The Frontier that she believed her daughter was in love with the man and she felt powerless to keep them apart. She said she didn’t force her daughter to get married. 

A pastor officiated a small wedding ceremony for the couple in front of rows of empty church pews. Butler, seven months pregnant, wore a simple white dress. There were no flowers. Because Butler was a minor, her mother’s name is listed on the marriage license as her legal guardian. 

The marriage was unhappy, Butler said. She stayed at home to care for her newborn child and never finished the 9th grade. She also sometimes looked after her husband’s two other children from a previous relationship, she said. 

Butler said it took her 12 years to become financially independent enough to file for divorce. 

Her ex-husband said drug use clouded his judgment and that he tried to do the right thing by marrying the mother of his child. 

He said marriage was necessary to keep authorities from investigating the situation. 

“Everybody involved would have been incarcerated,” he said.

The Frontier is not naming the man because he and Butler are still parenting their now-teenage child.

He said he is now sober and that he encouraged Butler to finish her schooling.

Bills propose changes to marriage and age of consent laws

Democratic legislators introduced bills to increase the marriage age in Oklahoma in 2020 and 2024 that were unsuccessful. 

A bill that would have banned minors from getting married unless they had been legally emancipated from their parents passed out of the House of Representatives in 2020 but didn’t advance in the Senate. Republican lawmakers spoke against the measure, arguing it would take authority away from parents.

“Overall, the great majority of parents are going to do things good for their children, and they’re going to be a better judge of what might be an unusual exception for a teenage marriage,” Rep. Jim Olsen, R-Roland, said before a vote on the bill.

This year, a Republican and a Democrat have both introduced legislation to raise the marriage age.

Rep. Andy Fugate, D-Oklahoma City, introduced House Bill 1141 this session, which includes the exception for minors who have been legally emancipated.

Fugate introduced similar legislation last year, but it didn’t get a hearing. Meanwhile, Olsen filed a bill that would have raised the age of consent in Oklahoma from 16 to 18. The bill included a Romeo and Juliet provision, allowing young adults to have consensual relationships with minors, as long as there wasn’t more than a 4-year age gap between them. 

Fugate opposed Olsen’s bill, and said it would have allowed a 20-year-old to have sex with someone who is 16. So he attached his child marriage ban to Olsen’s bill in order to make a point.

“These are adults having sex with children,” Fugate said. 

Olsen chose not to advance his bill after Fugate attached the marriage ban to it. 

In an interview, Olsen said he scrapped the bill because Oklahoma law requires bills to cover a single subject and marriage and the age of consent are located in two different sections of the state statutes. 

Olsen believes everyone should wait until they are at least 20 to marry, but said the law shouldn’t limit people’s options, particularly in cases of pregnancy. 

“If a young lady under 18 is expecting, the answer of a lot of those that would be more on the left on the political spectrum would be ‘well, she should just go and have an abortion,’” he said. “And I would differ with that. I think that’s a terrible idea.” 

Olsen has refiled his bill to change age of consent laws again this year. Sen. Warren Hamilton, R-McCurtain, has introduced a similar bill in the Senate. 

Breaking with Olsen, Hamilton has also authored Senate Bill 504 this legislative session, which would raise the legal marriage age to 18 in Oklahoma. 

Hamilton believes Oklahoma’s marriage law leaves too much room for exploitation, he said in a statement.

“By raising the age of consent to 18, we are ensuring that young people are legally recognized as minors until they reach adulthood, preventing predators from taking advantage of legal loopholes,” Hamilton said. “This legislation is about standing up for Oklahoma’s youth and making it clear that we will not tolerate any form of manipulation or coercion against them.”

Speaking out to help other girls

Butler, now 29, worked her way up in kitchen jobs and is now an executive chef for a catering company. 

She said she’s speaking out now on behalf of other child brides, because nobody helped her.

“It has to be changed for all the young girls that don’t have a voice,” she said.