Aundrea opened up to PEOPLE about what it has been like to take their relationship online and discussed some of the backlash that she has faced for their age gap.
When Aundrea Griffin first spotted Ken across the crowded dance floor of Texas honky-tonk bar Midnight Rodeo in 2009, she had no idea he would one day become her husband.
Aundrea was 22 and had just moved back in with her mom after living and working in California. Ken, who was 48 at the time, had also recently moved back to the area after his father had been diagnosed with brain cancer.
"He was such a gentleman," Aundrea recalls of meeting Ken while out with a friend that night. "He didn't even ask for my phone number, and my girlfriend and I were going to a different bar, and I was walking away with her, and I was like, 'Okay, well, it's nice to meet you. Bye.'"
Aundrea, however, wasn't ready to let Ken get away that easily.
"I was like, 'I know this guy did not just talk with me for an hour and not ask for my number.' So, I went back and I was like, 'You're not going to ask for my number?' And he was like, 'Well, I don't have my phone; it’s in the car, and I didn’t want to be rude.'"
"I wasn't used to that because I feel like the younger guys would be like, 'What are your digits? What's your snap?'" she jokes. Still, the next day Ken reached out, and the pair made plans to get dinner.
Aundrea admits that her mom had reservations about the relationship, especially given that Ken was older than her mother. "She had people check him out. I didn't know that until later," Aundrea remembers.
Despite her mom's reservations, Aundrea herself didn't hear any alarm bells. "'Well, how bad could it be? I mean he's in the military,'" she recalls thinking of Ken, a now-retired colonel in the Air Force.
Their relationship progressed, with Aundrea moving into Ken's place soon afterward, and by late December of 2009, Aundrea was pregnant with the couple's first child. Marriage, however, was a different story.
"Yeah, that was a thing for me too," she admits of Ken's initial reluctance to marry her.
"I got really irked by it," she says. "Because I'm like, 'I have your child. We're living together.' But he had been married before, and he was just happy where we were and didn't feel like we needed to get married. So that put a damper on our relationship for a little bit. I'm like: 'I don't want to not be married, and I want to have more kids.' And so eventually he got the hint."
Now, after nearly 16 years together -- 11 of those as a married couple as of Aug. 1 -- the pair has five children together and one more on the way.
As a result of their large family, as well as an interest in the couple's nearly 26-year age gap, Aundrea's social media following has also taken off -- though she started posting online nearly 13 years ago.
"It's hard to do consistently when you have so many kids, and I was homeschooling," she explains.
"But I think I started gaining a steady following this past year, and I have no plans on stopping. I like doing social media. It's just an outlet for me."
As with most things online, however, Aundrea’s videos have received mixed reactions.
"It's hilarious to see us back then versus now because people don't know," she laughs, describing common responses she gets on her videos. "They're like, 'Oh, she's with him for the money.' They don't know how long we've been together. 'Are all the kids his?' Yes, they are. 'Does he have kids from a previous marriage?' No, he doesn't. 'Was he married before?' Yes. These are the types of questions that we get if we go live over and over and over again."
While some comments appear to stem from a place of genuine curiosity, Aundrea has also encountered some that are "just heinous" and "wild."
Ken, she says, is less bothered by the messages. "He's like, 'I've fought in wars. I could give two s---- less what people have to say about our relationship.'"
And while Aundrea can stomach most of them, the comments that address her children are much harder to handle, she says.
"'They're going to grow up without a dad.' That's a big one. I feel like out of every five comments, that's at least twice. That one bothers me because obviously we know what we signed up for here," she says.
For Aundrea, however, what matters most is the relationship she has with Ken and their children.
"I look at it as a whole, and I see how good of a dad he is, how hands-on. He's retired. He gets to spend so much time with our kids."
She has also noticed the double standards in how the public reacts.
"I get a lot of hate from women his age, younger girls," she explains. "They will send me messages, like, 'You don't need to be dating your daddy.'"
Despite the negativity, Aundrea insists that what matters is her relationship with Ken and her family, adding: "We know who we are and we're happy. And if you can't be happy for us then move on."
And, for her, the upsides of their relationship far outweigh the criticism.
"The best part is just the way he's with our kids," she says. Ken also cleans the kitchen, does laundry and leaves their place "spotless."
"He's not that guy who thinks I'm supposed to do it all. And he's hilarious. He's such a good storyteller and he loves being with us," she explains.
Now, as she prepares to welcome their sixth baby, due around Valentine's Day, Aundrea is continually looking to the future while being mindful of her past.
The content creator is open on her social media platforms about how she dropped out of high school in 10th grade and got her GED, saying that at the time she wanted nothing to do with education.
"You hear it all: 'Oh, you're stupid. You're not going to amount to anything blah blah blah,'" she recalls. "And you start to believe those things. So I think that did go on a little like: 'Oh I'm going to live my best life and do whatever I want. I can work and then ...' Whatever. You don't need college."
However, after she had her first child Hayden, her viewpoint on education started to change.
"Ken got his master's degree. I think he has two master's degrees," she explains. "I kind of had in my head I could never do that. I could never get there but maybe I could do something."
After having Hayden, Aundrea went to community college and focused on taking remedial courses to catch up to college level. A few years after giving birth to Hayden, Aundrea had their daughter.
"So I kept going to school; lo and behold nine years later I ended up graduating from Texas A&M," she says. "I would wake up at 3 a.m. to finish writing a paper just so I could have that time to be quiet; then I'd get up and get kids ready and then drop them off at daycare then go to school."
"I could never do that now at this age but I did; it was like clockwork. There was a time where I was like: 'I just can't finish this; this is too hard; I have too many kids.' But I graduated with four from Texas A&M."
As the pair moves into this next phase together, Aundrea is choosing to block out the criticism of her relationship.
"My main question for everyone is: why is there so much hate when the kids are happy, healthy, thriving, and cared for in every way you could imagine?" she asks. "We already have enough hate in this world. If no one's hurting anyone what's the problem?"