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Howard Gensler is a veteran journalist who’s worked at the Philadelphia Daily News, TV Guide and the Philadelphia Inquirer and is a founding editor of bettorsinsider.com.
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Which States Have The Most Married Couples?
With National Spouses Day coming on Jan. 26, we decided to take a break from Kansas sports betting sites to look at the states that have the highest percentage of married individuals. And let us tell you, it’s hard to find numbers that add up.
We used the World Population Review’s Marital Status by State report from 2023, which claims the state that leads the U.S. in married couples is Utah, with 55.8%. It seems like a high number, but it’s Utah, so some people could have multiple spouses, which would up the number.
Which State Is No.1?
In Utah, adults like their stability. The state is No. 1 in the country for opposite-sex marriage, with close to 93% of couples who live together being legally wed. And although it’s a tiny number, nearly 70% of same-sex couples who live together in Utah are also legally wed.
That ranks Utah No. 3 behind North Dakota and Montana, two states which will never be confused with San Francisco or Manhattan’s West Village.
But marriage-crazed Utah is not the norm anymore. Although the Top 10 states in our chart — including No. 6 Kansas — have marriage rates over 50%, nationwide the number of married Americans dropped from 50% in 2015 to 45% in 2020.
Why? According to the eighth annual American Family Survey by Deseret News and the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University, the number of people who are not in a romantic relationship climbed 5% from 32% to 37%. Clearly, if fewer people are in romantic relationships, fewer people will be getting married.
The study did not ask what percentage of the married couples were still in romantic relationships. And we can guarantee you won't find any odds for this topic on BetMGM Sportsbook in Kansas.
Kansas Comes In At No. 6
As for Kansas, with a population just shy of 3 million, wedding.report says that in 2021 the state saw 15,517 weddings — 31,034 people tying the knot. The average cost of those weddings was $19,737, which ranked Kansas 35th out of U.S. states when it came to wedding expenses.
Kansans love to get married, but don’t expect endless caviar with the hors d'oeuvres, a top-shelf open bar and a chocolate fountain at the reception.
Strictlyweddings.com says Kansas ranks No. 34 in terms of total weddings (35th in total divorces) and says, “That means there were an average of 39 weddings per day in Kansas.” Average, schmaverage. We’re betting there are hardly any weddings in Kansas on a Thursday in January and a lot more than 39 on a Sunday in June.
Strictlyweddings.com also says there are 574,260 married couples in Kansas. That’s 1,148,520 married people, nowhere near the 52.2% number claimed by the World Population Review.
We needed a third source.
Enter livestories.com. This site claims that in 2018, 620,500 Kansas women were married and 623,000 Kansas men. That number is about 100,000 higher than the strictlyweddings number but still nowhere near the World Population Review number.
The other odd part of this number is that it bucks the gay marriage trend. As more women tend to marry women, there should be more married women in Kansas than married men.
So let’s not quibble. Let’s just say that a lot of people get married in Kansas — significantly more than in states such as Louisiana, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Mississippi and New York, five states that have virtually nothing in common. Well, nothing in common except that they’re at the bottom of the list of married couples per state.
Happy National Spouses Day.
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