The Worst Red Flags In Mike Johnson's Marriage

Mike Johnson joined the House of Representatives in 2017 to little fanfare, remaining quiet in the conservative ambiance. As such, his ascension to Speaker of the House six years later was a surprise to many. Shortly after the announcement, media sources chronicled Johnson's positions on topics ranging from same-sex marriage to abortion (he's against both). News outlets were also interested in the speaker's wife, Kelly Johnson. It soon became clear that the couple shares similar political and religious views.

Mike and Kelly have been united in their mission to champion conservative politics and religious values, having formerly co-hosted a podcast together and given seminars and presentations to churches and other communities. The Southern Baptist Convention even awarded them with the Champions of the Faith award. While the couple's beliefs may raise concerns for some people, their ideology has only strengthened their marriage, but what about other aspects of their relationship? Despite seeming like a conservative power couple, the Johnsons' marriage may still have a few red flags, at least to some people.

Mike Johnson met his bride-to-be, then named Kelly Lary, at a friend's wedding in 1998, and he wasn't fooling around. Mike revealed in a Facebook post celebrating Kelly's birthday that he confessed his love for her just three weeks after they met. In a statement, he wrote, "As I've been saying since I first knew her: 'What you ARE thunders so loudly, I cannot hear what you say.'"

Mike and Kelly were already discussing baby names on their first date, and they were engaged just six months later. Just a year after meeting, they got married. Rushing into marriage — and confessing your love after three weeks — can, of course, be seen as a red flag, though it obviously hasn't been one for the Johnsons, who are still happily married after all these years.

It's unknown if Mike's childhood experiences played a role in their quickie relationship timeline, but as he told ABC back in 2005, "My own parents are divorced. As anyone who goes through that knows, that was a traumatic thing for our whole family. I'm a big proponent of marriage and fidelity and all the things that go with it, and I've seen firsthand the devastation [divorce] can cause." 

Before Mike and Kelly Johnson's wedding, the couple entered into a covenant marriage, a marital contract designed to make divorce more difficult. These legally binding documents require couples to complete counseling prior to marriage, and nullify the ability to have a no-fault divorce.

If someone in a covenant marriage wants to get a divorce, they must show evidence of abuse, adultery, imprisonment, a felony conviction, or abandonment (for more than a year). Additionally, you must live separately for two years (or one year if abuse is the cause of divorce) before being able to divorce. This is only legal in three states — Arkansas, Louisiana, and Arizona.

The Johnsons appeared on "Good Morning America" in 2001 for a segment about covenant marriages. In one of Diane Sawyer's cringe-worthy interviews at the time, Kelly stated (via Meidas Touch), "I think that it would be a pretty big red flag if you asked your mate or your fiancé, 'Let's do a covenant marriage,' and they said they don't really want to do that." Considering how many people would be alarmed at just the mention of a covenant marriage (since it could be used to trap someone in an abusive relationship), it's clear that red flags are in the eye of the beholder.

Mike Johnson celebrated the 25th anniversary of his covenant marriage in 2024 with a very specific Bible verse. He provided a Facebook compliment to his wife when he wrote, "King Solomon wrote with the wisdom of God, and proclaimed in the Proverbs that 'an excellent wife is the crown of her husband' (Pr. 12:4)."

Mike Johnson had a son before Kelly Johnson ever gave birth, and they only have about a 10-year age difference. That's because the Johnsons have an informally adopted son named Michael Tirrell James. According to The Daily Mail, Mike met James in 1996, two years before meeting his future wife. Mike first mentored the then-14-year-old boy while volunteering for Young Life, a Christian ministry in Louisiana that worked with teenagers. Former volunteers and teens associated with that ministry went public in 2021 about being allegedly groomed and sexually harassed or assaulted during their time there.

Three years after meeting the teen and soon after entering into a covenant marriage, Mike took in James when the teenager became homeless. He and Kelly became his legal guardians (though they did not go through the entire adoption process). However, James was left behind when the Johnsons moved, and while they supposedly stayed in contact, Mike and Kelly have been pretty secretive about James. 

While it may seem like a red flag for any married couple to avoid any mention of their child, Mike's communications director attempted to clarify things, telling Newsweek in November 2023, "[Michael] asked not to be involved in their new public life. The Speaker has respected that sentiment throughout his career and maintains a close relationship with Michael to this day." For her part, Kelly Johnson has said nothing publicly about Michael.

In addition to the 2001 news piece about covenant marriage, the Johnsons appeared on the German news channel n-tv in 2015 for a news segment about purity culture. Mike appeared alongside his daughter, Hannah Johnson, at a purity ball in which young girls pledged their virginity to their fathers. Hannah is seen staring into her dad's eyes and reciting (via ABC): "I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future husband, and my future children, to a lifetime of purity, including sexual purity."

Kelly Johnson appears in the news piece, explaining that abstinence before marriage is "biblical" and that she and Mike didn't plan to teach Hannah about contraceptives. Of course, this is partly why studies prove that girls who have committed to virginity pledges are more likely to have unplanned pregnancies and STDs than those who receive normative sex education. This is also why purity balls could be seen as red flags to some people.

The German journalist chastised the Johnsons and the apparent hypocrisy in their marriage during her voiceover for the news piece. "Hannah's parents isolate their daughter from the real world," said the reporter, adding, "They had sex before marriage, but Hannah isn't supposed to know that." She also compared Hannah's situation to an arranged marriage, speculating that Mike would be the one to choose her husband.

A 2022 clip of Mike Johnson speaking at Cypress Baptist Church in Louisiana went viral for some very awkward reasons. At the event, Johnson explained his usage of so-called "accountability" software called Covenant Eyes, which is spyware meant to monitor adult content on a person's phone or computer.

"It sends a report to your accountability partner," Johnson said of Covenant Eyes in the clip (via X). "My accountability partner right now is Jack, my son. He's 17." Johnson revealed that the software was installed on all their devices and that he and his son receive weekly reports about their internet behavior. "If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice," Johnson added. He didn't mention how his wife felt about their son keeping track of Mike's search history, and she has not commented publicly about it.

There might be a few issues with Johnson having Covenant Eyes on his phone. It's debatable whether it actually works in discerning adult content from any other kind, according to testing. Considering the software could be easily hacked, it could create a national security issue, it seems like the Speaker of the House probably shouldn't have accessible spyware on his phone. Finally, the son of Covenant Eyes co-founder Ron DeHaas was arrested in a honeypot investigation in which he planned a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl.

Kelly Johnson took down the website for her business, Onward Christian Counseling Services, shortly after Mike Johnson was sworn in as Speaker of the House in October 2023. Based on archived screengrabs, her services included faith-based counseling outside the purview of state-licensed professional therapy, with Kelly specializing in temperament-based counseling. This method was developed as an early medical theory by Hippocrates in the 4th century BC, with Kelly's treatment dividing people up into five temperaments: melancholy, choleric, sanguine, supine, and phlegmatic.

That was hardly the only aspect of Kelly's counseling service that raised some eyebrows; it also adopted bylaws from a template that Mike had written. The operating agreement stated, "We believe and the Bible teaches that any form of sexual immorality, such as adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bisexual conduct, ... incest, pornography or any attempt to change one's sex, or disagreement with one's biological sex, is sinful and offensive to God" (per Yahoo News! via The Huffington Post).

This website was possibly taken down to protect Mike's image when he was thrust into the public spotlight, as the untold truth of Kelly's work may have offended many people. While it obviously wasn't an issue for the Johnsons, the fact that Kelly had to remove her professional website and likely had to suspend much of her actual work may have caused an issue with the marriage.

If anything's a red flag in a marriage, it's a partner who mysteriously drains the household finances. Mike Johnson is reportedly the least wealthy Speaker of the House in decades, with Forbes estimating his net worth at $350,000. However, his real finances are a shady mystery, as it has been difficult to accurately determine the Johnsons' wealth despite Congress requiring annual financial disclosure statements. Ever since 2016, Johnson has listed neither a bank account nor any assets in his paperwork, which is odd for someone who makes $223,500 a year, plus money he and Kelly Johnson earned from their work with different Christian institutions. Members of Congress are required to report household bank accounts and assets worth more than $1,000.

Johnson was asked to clarify how he could not have a bank account while speaking to Shannon Bream of Fox News. "Look, I'm a man of modest means, okay? I was a lawyer, but I did constitutional law, and most of my career has been in the nonprofit sector," Johnson said, adding, "We have four kids, five now that are very active, and I have kids in graduate school, law school, undergraduate. We have a lot of expenses."

"Speaker Johnson has a personal bank account," Johnson's spokesperson, Raj Shah, told Politico, claiming that it is not an interest-bearing account and thus does not need to be reported. This didn't stop the Office of Congressional Ethics from being asked to investigate Johnson for this and other financial issues. The FEC later received a complaint that Johnson was illegally using campaign donations to pay his rent in D.C.

Mike Johnson was sworn in as Speaker of the House on October 25, 2023, following a tumultuous three weeks without a Republican leader. When Mike took the podium to thank various people, he shouted out his wife, Kelly Johnson, in what may be viewed by some people as uncomfortable and demeaning. "I want to thank my dedicated wife of almost 25 years, Kelly. She's not here, we couldn't get a flight in time. This happened sort of suddenly," Johnson said, adding, "She's spent the last couple of weeks on her knees in prayer to the Lord, and, um, she's a little worn out" (via The New Republic).

While it's doubtful that he meant this as a sexual double entendre, it was nevertheless perceived as such by some people with dirtier and more judgmental minds than the Johnsons. However, in public, Kelly played her role as the supportive evangelical wife and didn't seem to mind, praising her husband during their first interview together after the vote. "I believe that God has blessed him here. That's biblical," she told Kayleigh McEnany of Fox News with a big smile. Nonetheless, between Mike's comments and his frequent, aforementioned Facebook posts with somewhat belittling subtext, perhaps Kelly is getting tired of the public spotlight.

Mike Johnson's ascension to Speaker of the House has disrupted more than just Kelly Johnson's professional life, as her personal life had to completely shape itself around her husband's schedule. Things were already difficult for the Johnson family with Mike as a member of Congress, as Kelly told Katie Miller on her podcast. "He was elected, I guess, in 2017, and we stayed back in Louisiana. I was raising the kids and he was just going back and forth, and it was not easy because he just had to be away so much," Kelly said, adding, "When he was elected Speaker, I think we were at home that first year and realized that it just couldn't be done, because we never saw him, our son never was able to see him." As such, the family had to move to Washington, D.C.

Miller asked Kelly what was easier for her, having Mike travel home when he was a member of Congress or living in Washington with Mike as Speaker of the House. Her answer revealed the most painfully obvious problem in the Johnsons' marriage. "Travel back and forth and be a member of Congress, no doubt, was much easier. And that was not easy. That was difficult," Kelly said. In fact, the interview between Miller and the Johnsons is uncomfortable, clearly highlighting how much Mike's busy job has ruptured Kelly's life and their family as a whole. It's a red flag that any couple can understand.