The Making of a Beautiful Life

Cole and Charisma Sydnor share their daily adventures on their popular YouTube channel, ’Roll With Cole & Charisma’

by

This article has been updated since it first appeared in print.

The video begins with a young couple making their way into a physical rehabilitation center. Cole Sydnor’s hands, clenched into fists, push the wheels of his wheelchair forward, while his girlfriend, Charisma Jamison, walks alongside him.  

Inside, she helps him onto a table. A team of trainers moves Cole, who is a quadriplegic, through a series of exercises and stretches before strapping him into a wearable robotic exoskeleton that wraps around his legs and torso.  

“I actually can’t feel my legs,” he jokes to his mother behind the camera.  

After a few minutes, Cole is on his feet while Charisma looks on, smiling.  

“You’re so tall,” she says before coming in for their first-ever standing hug.

Cole then places his arms into braces attached to a walker. Two trainers support him as he takes one step, and then another, and then another. Cole walks across the room, out the door, down the hall and outside. Charisma is there every step of the way.

Cole and Charisma recorded the video to share a milestone with friends and family — but it spread like wildfire on YouTube. Almost three years later, the video has more than 3.7 million views.

The video marks a turning point in Cole and Charisma’s relationship. It shows the first time Charisma saw Cole standing and walking. It’s the video that allowed their hobby to morph into a career. And it’s the moment their space for sharing updates and answering questions became an international platform for educating others about life as an interabled, interracial couple.

‘This thing has legs’

The story of Cole’s disability began on a summer day nearly 10 years ago when, at 16 years old, he dove into the James River and struck his head on a submerged rock. He tried to swim to safety, but his body didn’t respond. His friends pulled him from the water and called 911.

At the hospital, Cole learned he’d fractured his C4, C6, and T1 vertebrae, and the C5 was shattered.  

His recovery took him to the Shepherd Center, a top spinal cord rehabilitation facility in Atlanta, where he gained a fuller understanding of the scope of his injuries. Cole has no function from the chest down. He can use his biceps and has limited use of his forearms, which gives him some wrist mobility.

Four months later, Cole and his parents returned to Richmond, and he eventually began outpatient rehabilitation at Sheltering Arms hospital. He graduated from Atlee High School, where he had been an avid athlete and a promising lacrosse player before the accident.

Cole was outspoken about his experience — and about accessibility. He spoke to local student groups about safety on the river and got involved with Sportable, a local organization that offers adaptive sports and recreation opportunities for people with physical and visual disabilities. During his senior year at the University of Richmond, Cole became the first rower with arm and shoulder adaptations to compete with his collegiate team in a regatta.

Through it all, he continued his rehabilitation with physical and occupational therapy at Sheltering Arms, where, in November 2017, he first crossed paths with Charisma.

Even as a young child, Charisma had an interest in the medical field and in helping others. After graduating from Hermitage High School, she majored in exercise science at Virginia Commonwealth University and studied abroad in Brazil. That’s where she learned about occupational therapy, and it led her to a job as a rehab tech at Sheltering Arms.

Cole and Charisma share slightly different versions of their first meeting.

Charisma says she was on a break on the inpatient side of the facility, and she asked an outpatient therapist if she could help out. She was assigned to assist Cole with getting off the electrical stimulation bike, and they talked for a few minutes about the Sheltering Arms gala later that week.

“I asked him if he had a date, and he asked me [if I did], and we both said no,” she says. “At the gala, I had this mindset of approaching him in some way, but I was very nervous.”

Cole says the therapists at Sheltering Arms knew that both he and Charisma were looking for a relationship, and they pointed her out to him one day. But, he counters, it wasn’t until the gala that he really saw her and was struck by her smile.

The day after the gala, they followed each other on Instagram. Charisma says he “liked some pictures, and then he slid into my DMs. We started talking from there.”  

It only took a month for Cole to know the relationship was real, he says. That’s when Charisma first spent the night with Cole, who was then living with his parents, Kelly and Clement. During the night, she accidentally knocked off the catheter he uses while sleeping.  

“I was mortified,” he says. “I was thinking I would have to call my parents in to help out.

“But she was like, ‘No, I don’t want that to happen.’ She fixed the problem and did it so gracefully and didn’t seem put off by it at all.”  

The next morning, Cole heard Charisma mumble something that sounded like, “I love you,” and he responded, “I love you, too.” They both awkwardly recanted, each not wanting to admit they’d been the first to say it.  

“We both knew, a month in, we’re in love with each other,” Cole says. “We both knew that we wanted a life partner, and that this thing has legs — pun intended.”  

‘How many couples say the same thing?’

As Cole and Charisma’s relationship progressed, their friends and family members started to ask questions about how their relationship worked and what obstacles they faced. There were also more mundane queries, like, when they watched a movie, did they sit together on the couch, or did Cole stay in his chair?

Rather than answering each person individually, Charisma suggested they make a few videos and start a YouTube channel. “Who knows?” she thought. “Maybe other people will be interested, too.”

Cole wasn’t a stranger to sharing some aspects of his story. While he was at the Shepherd Center, his mother, Kelly, recorded updates on Cole’s progress for everyone back at home. She filmed Cole speaking for the first time a month after his accident, his first wrist movement and his final tube removal.  

When Charisma approached Kelly about her idea, Kelly had two pieces of advice: Leave some space for privacy and intimacy, and keep it positive.  

“I said, ‘If you can do that, I’m all about it,’ ” Kelly says.

Cole and Charisma’s early videos show the couple going on dates to festivals, baseball games and shopping malls. A few educational videos talk about how Cole gets into a car or an inaccessible house, while others answer questions about intimacy.  

Charisma’s mother, Katrina Jamison, says she wasn’t afraid to ask questions, but she appreciated having a place to go and learn about her daughter’s relationship.  

“When they did their Q&A, it made me realize, this is an education for everyone,” Katrina says. “It’s a good thing, because it’s not just her friends and family looking at this.”  

Cole and Charisma continued that way for two months until July 22, 2018, when they posted the video of Cole in the exoskeleton. After the video went viral, they were able to monetize their videos and started attracting a larger audience.

Today, their channel, “Roll With Cole & Charisma,” has more than 550,000 subscribers, with another 180,000-plus followers across their three Instagram accounts. Even their service dog, Sophie, has a few thousand followers.

“When they started [their channel], there was nothing like that out there,” says John Kobal, who became friends with Cole and Charisma when he worked as the coordinator of Sheltering Arms’ Neuro Fit program. “It’s been super helpful for people who have questions. It breaks down stigmas. Maybe it’ll even break down the wall for somebody to start dating somebody who has a disability — and that would be great for all parties involved.”  

“What should hit people first is that love comes in all shapes, forms and sizes.” —Cole Sydnor

Over the last three years, their channel has grown steadily. Advertising revenue and brand sponsorships pay the bills. Cole, who previously had a real estate company focused on creating accessible lodging, and Charisma, who left Sheltering Arms and withdrew from an occupational therapy graduate program, now focus on their channel full time. They also hired Armando DeMarchi in March 2020 to edit most of their videos. The couple continue to film themselves, and Cole handles any remaining editing.

In the future, they’re eyeing a podcast to highlight the work and stories of others in the disability community, and they’re hoping to become more active as public speakers, particularly with corporations that want to be more accessible and inclusive for their employees, clients and consumers.

The content on their channel has expanded as well. They still answer questions about accessibility and inclusivity, offering an inside look at their relationship, but they also include lifestyle content such as travel, cooking and home renovations.

“We want to raise awareness regarding acceptance and inclusivity,” Charisma says, “but we also want to show the normalcy of our relationship. Yes, we have a different relationship, but we deal with the same normal issues that an able-bodied couple might deal with. We always talk about how the biggest challenge in our relationship is communication — and how many couples say the same thing?”

‘The dreams are starting to become a reality’

While the rise of their YouTube channel has brought in hundreds of thousands of supporters, Cole and Charisma have also been on the receiving end of negative comments.

Charisma is more often the target. Commenters ask if she’s taking on too much, and whether she’s able to handle Cole’s needs. They question whether Cole is capable of typical daily life tasks and see Charisma as his caregiver, not his partner. Viewers assume they know the most intimate details about the couple’s relationship and have insight into their decisions. Charisma has even faced racist comments.

“At the beginning, the negative comments were hard for me to deal with,” she says. “I cried a lot and felt like people were constantly bashing me. It’s so much easier for people to be racist when they’re hiding behind a computer screen.

“We had a conversation about how to deal with it, and it really brought us closer together.”  

They blocked certain words and phrases on the channel, which helped. Their fan base is also deeply loyal, and Cole says their comment section “kind of self-polices at this point.”  

The questions about Cole’s abilities and Charisma’s caregiver role presented an opportunity, though.

They’ve produced videos that show Cole’s night and morning routines, as well as how they remodeled their house to make it accessible. In early 2021, after one video revealed a bottle of prenatal vitamins, they responded to questions and confirmed they are trying to have a baby.

“We don’t want people to look at Cole’s disability and say, ‘Oh, they can’t [have a baby] because he’s disabled,’ ” Charisma says. “That’s just not fair. So we address things head-on.”  

The videos also reveal Cole and Charisma’s growing independence. After the couple moved out of the Sydnor family home and into their own house last summer, their daily support system shrank, meaning that Charisma had to shoulder many of Cole’s caregiving needs without his parents down the hall.  

Kelly says that in the earlier years of Cole’s recovery, he often relied on her to figure out new ways of doing daily tasks — something she was happy to do.  

“I couldn’t fix him,” she says, “but I could fix little things in his world to make his life easier.

“With Charisma, if they have dogs and children and housework and jobs, for her to take all of that on would be a lot. Charisma would do anything he wants, but he doesn’t want that. He wants her to be his partner, not his caregiver.”  

Cole says the move was a huge step toward his independence, and it encouraged him to reevaluate his own understanding of his abilities. He’s taking on more household responsibilities, and he has made further progress in his recovery, such as using the bathroom on his own.  

It helps that Charisma worked at Sheltering Arms and studied occupational therapy. She knows how to approach the skills Cole needs, and they both have an inherent drive that motivates them.

And with Cole’s independence, both Kelly and Charisma have regained some of their own freedom and flexibility.  

“There were times, especially in the first hours of his accident, when I thought, ‘All of my hopes and dreams for this child are gone, in a nanosecond,’ ” Kelly says. “And then I realized the dreams are just going to look different. I still wanted the same sort of things I had before: that he lives a happy life, that he finds someone he can partner with.  

“I do feel like all of the pieces of the dreams are starting to become a reality now, and I couldn’t ask for more than that.”

‘I consider it a life well spent’

Cole and Charisma reached the next milestone in their relationship in November 2020, with an intimate wedding at the Virginia House, an English Tudor manor house overlooking the James River.  

They originally planned for more than 200 guests, but COVID-19 restrictions prevented a large gathering of family and friends. The couple included farther-flung supporters through a livestreamed ceremony — on YouTube, naturally — and their wedding was featured in The New York Times’ Vows column.  

“It was a fairy-tale wedding,” Charisma says. “I think it was a blessing in disguise having such a small, intimate wedding with people who mean so much to us and are in our daily lives.”

Cole adds that he knew it would be an emotionally powerful day, but he still wasn’t expecting the range of emotions he experienced.  

At a private first look before the ceremony, he saw Charisma in her dress for the first time.  

“I already had tears in my eyes,” he says. “When I saw her, I just lost it. I knew, this is going to be a beautiful life, with a beautiful woman.”

In his vows, Cole promised, “If I can make you smile every day for the rest of my life, I consider it a life well spent.” It’s a commitment that aligns with the motto undergirding their entire presence and outlook on life: Be positive.  

It could be easy to see that optimism as saccharine, a facade they present in their virtual world that they can’t possibly maintain in real-life. But their parents and friends insist — what you see is what you get.

In fact, their following grew considerably in 2020 as people sought out content that made them feel happy and connected.

“It was a blessing for a lot of people who subscribed and watched them,” says Derrick Jamison, Charisma’s father. “To click on the channel and see something positive, something totally different than what’s going on — I think that was a good thing.”

The positivity is both a balance and a choice. Of course, they say, they experience challenges and hard days, but they choose to focus on the silver linings, the uplifting moments.

“Right after my injury, I learned what it was like to live in despair,” Cole says. “I was about to die, and coming back from that was super depressing. Coping with being paralyzed was super depressing.  

“I remember a moment where I thought, ‘Let me just try to be positive, see what that feels like.’ I felt so much lighter. I felt so much happier. It was an easier way to go through my recovery and my rehab. That’s how I wanted to live moving forward.”

Cole and Charisma say it’s validating to hear from followers who tell them that their videos helped them smile when nothing else would. At its most elemental, they hope their channel is a beacon of positivity, with love at its core.  

“The love is there,” Cole says. “If you watch our videos and don’t see that —”

“You’ve got some blinders on,” Charisma says.

“What should hit people first is that love comes in all shapes, forms and sizes,” Cole adds. “With that foundation, you can create a full, meaningful life with somebody, no matter what your circumstances are.

“Love is love, and no matter how it manifests, it’s beautiful.”

Watchlist

Ready to binge-watch Cole and Charisma’s journey? Head to youtube.com/c/rollwithcole and start with these videos.