Growing up, Darlene and Diane Sanders shared everything: friends, clothes, hobbies, crushes. The identical twin sisters, now 50, even married a set of identical twin brothers, bought houses next door to each other and work at the same job.

Their journey began on August 16, 1970 in an Illinois hospital parking lot, where Darlene was born 45 minutes earlier than Diane.

“Our parents didn’t know Diane was coming!” Darlene tells PEOPLE.

Since then, the twins have been inseparable, not spending more than a week apart from each other their whole lives.

“We’re really close,” Diane says. “We have the same likes in food, clothes, margaritas!”

In August 1998, the sisters, then 27, met their now-husbands Mark and Craig Sanders, both 56, at an annual twins festival in Twinsburg, Ohio. They were chatting with Mark, whom Darlene remembers as a “tall, funny” guy, in the hotel bar before he ran to get his identical twin, Craig.

“I was attracted more to Mark — I don’t know if it was his personality or what,” Darlene recalls.

Adds Diane: “I was more attracted to Craig, I thought he was the better-looking one!”

Mark and Craig felt the same way.

“When we were traveling back home, I asked Mark which twin he liked more and he said, ‘Well, the one I was sitting next to at lunch,’ and I said, ‘Great, that was Darlene and you should talk to her because I like Diane,’" Craig recalls. “I was hoping he wouldn't say he liked Diane!”

The brothers lived in Texas, where they were working as web designers for the Houston Astros baseball team, while Darlene and Diane worked as legal secretaries for the same firm in Illinois.

The four of them began double-dating — Darlene with Mark, Diane with Craig — and took vacations together. During one trip to Florida in 1999, the brothers surprised Diane and Darlene with matching engagement rings cut from the same diamond.

After a double wedding that November, the two couples bought houses next door to each other near Houston, Texas with a joint backyard.

Darlene and Mark wanted to have kids right away, but Craig and Diane waited. In a twist of fate, Diane got pregnant first — with twins.

“I felt guilty because they had just lost their baby [in a miscarriage] and we were having two,” Diane recalls.

As a kid, Darlene always imagined it’d fun to have twins because she “loved being a twin so much,” while Diane “didn’t want twins because she hated being constantly compared,” Darlene says. “It all worked out how it was supposed to!”

Both agree the experience has brought them closer.

“I didn’t even think that was possible, because we were so close already," says Diane.

Diane and Craig share three sons: Brady and Colby, 19, and Holden, 15, while Darlene and Mark have two girls: Reagan, 18, and Landry, 17.

The cousins, who have attended elementary, middle and high school together, spend a lot of time hanging out at home.

“It’s pretty fun!” Landry says of the built-in social group.

While the twins’ normal routines have been upended amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic (they normally carpool to work and eat lunch together), they’ve found creative ways to bond.

“We start our morning off every day with a walk,” Darlene says. “We’ll also have family game nights and movie nights.”

Craig teaches economics and history at a local high school and college, while Mark works for the post office.

When people see the foursome out in public, they’re usually caught off-guard, Diane says, but she’s grateful to be a twin and for the life she and Darlene have together.

“My favorite thing about being a twin is that you always have a best friend,” she says.

Adds Darlene: “Yes, you’re my best friend, always.”

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