Omar kept her marriage to Elmi quiet, with no one from the Somali community invited to the wedding. ... 'When she married Elmi, no one even knew about it.' ... The first report that Omar and her husband were siblings appeared on the website Somalispot in 2016. It said of Elmi, 34: 'As soon as Ilhan Omar married him he started university at her alma mater North Dakota State University where he graduated in 2012. ... Elmi and Omar married on February 12, 2009 at a Hennepin County office in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, southwest of Minneapolis, their marriage license shows. Omar said she and Hirsi had separated in 2008, and because their faith-based union was never recognized by law, neither is their separation. ... After their marriage Omar and Elmi moved to Fargo, where they both attended North Dakota State. But Omar and Hirsi were still together as husband and wife, [community leader Abdihakim] Osman said. ... 'She said she needed to get papers for her brother to go to school. We all thought she was just getting papers together to allow him to stay in this country. 'Once she had the papers they could apply for student loans. 'They both moved to North Dakota to go to school but she was still married to [Hirsi]. In the Somali way, the only marriage that mattered was the one in the mosque. ... Osman believes Elmi and Omar sought out someone outside the Somali community to conduct the ceremony because an imam would have known they were related and would have refused to marry them. ... Omar and Elmi eventually divorced in 2017 and she remarried Hirsi — with whom she had a third child — in a civil ceremony the following year, just in time for her election to Congress. Osman scoffs at the idea that this was a real remarriage. 'They never parted,' he said.
