Ten twin nursing students at Goldfarb School of Nursing are training side by side, turning sibling bonds into support for demanding healthcare careers.
ST. LOUIS — At Goldfarb School of Nursing, students are learning the science of medicine and the art of caring. And for an extraordinary group of students this year, no one has to figure any of it out alone.
alk the halls of Goldfarb long enough and something becomes clear. At first, it seems like coincidence: two students who look alike. Then another pair. And another. Until the count reaches a number that stops even the faculty in their tracks: five sets of twins — 10 students — all enrolled at the same time, all choosing the same career and all doing it together.
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“We got an email about it,” laughed Raonna Armstrong, who is in the school’s certified registered nurse anesthetist program alongside her twin sister, Tianna Brown. “We were like, there’s five of us.”
Different roads, same destination
The twins arrived at Goldfarb from remarkably different places.
Armstrong and Brown came by way of the Minnesota Army National Guard, where they both served as chemical operations specialists — a role they describe, laughing, as essentially being “human car washers,” trained to respond to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear disasters.
But their roads to nursing weren’t identical.
Armstrong pushed toward health care from the beginning and encouraged her sister to follow. Brown, meanwhile, moved through environmental science, biology and chemistry before earning a finance degree — which, she admits, made no sense.
“Raonna would always be like, ‘you’re gonna be a nurse,'” Brown recalled. “And I’d be like, ‘no, I’m not. Stop saying that.’ And she’d be like, ‘you are.'”
The turning point came during Brown’s wisdom teeth removal. The CRNA who administered anesthesia made her feel calm and cared for in a frightening moment. She walked out knowing exactly what she wanted to do. Brown switched from finance to nursing, completed Goldfarb’s accelerated program, graduated in 2022, and then did what Armstrong had been doing all along: told her sister this was the right path.
Armstrong, characteristically, already knew.
The two are now in their second year of Goldfarb’s three-year CRNA program, training for one of nursing’s most advanced roles, which requires ICU experience and a doctoral degree.
For Kelsey and Katie Boyer, 23-year-old identical twins from Farmington, the path to nursing was shaped by grief. Their grandmother suffered a series of falls and later died from her injuries, but not before the twins watched their cousin step in as her nurse.
“Our grandma actually got sick, and our cousin was able to … be her nurse, and that kind of introduced the different aspects of nursing to us,” Kelsey said.
The Boyers had been on a pre-med track at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, studying biology before taking a gap year to reconsider their plans.
Katie discovered Goldfarb’s accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing program — a one-year program running from August to August — and immediately encouraged her sister to join her.
“Nobody really comes between us,” Katie said. “It’s always my sister first. We are truly best friends.”
For Madyson and Rylee Bohnert, 19, of Pevely, nursing was practically in the air they breathed growing up. Their mother is a nurse who spent years working in the NICU and now serves as a NICU case manager.
“Our mom’s a nurse and has been for her whole life — or our whole life, I guess,” Rylee said. “So we’ve been exposed to it since we were little.”
The Bohnerts graduated from high school last year, making them among the youngest students in Goldfarb’s 20-month program. They have not yet started clinicals, but Madyson is already eyeing the ICU and Rylee is drawn to the NICU — the same field where their mother built her career.
Sydney and William Grant, 20, from O’Fallon, Missouri, are the program’s only brother-sister twin pair. Sydney always wanted to become a nurse, inspired by an aunt who works as an oncology nurse at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. William took a longer road to the same destination.
“We fought for a long, long time — up until … probably about 17,” William admitted with a laugh. “We fought every day and then we got closer.”
Now they lean on each other daily.
“Say I do bad on a test and she does good, we can talk about it,” William said. “She can help me through it.”
And the first day of scary, unfamiliar nursing school?
“The first day of school is never scary,” Sydney said, “because I always have someone with me.”
And then there are Holly and Heidi Carberry, 21, from Festus, who credit their nursing careers to a billboard and a fortunate coincidence. The twins had been studying biology but were second-guessing themselves when Holly spotted a Goldfarb billboard. That same day, their mother heard a radio advertisement about the school’s full-ride scholarship.
They applied. They were accepted. And they never looked back.
“We’ve always done everything together,” Heidi said. “Every big decision we make is a group decision.”
The twin bond explained
Ask any of the five pairs what it means to go through such a demanding experience alongside a twin, and the answers come without hesitation.
For the Boyers, it is identity. For the Grants, it is safety net. For the Carberrys, it is simply the only way they have ever known how to move through the world.
And for Madyson and Rylee Bohnert, the explanation is almost too simple.
“We just like convince each other,” Madyson said, “and then we’re just on the same path.”
Now they are learning to do for strangers what they have always done for each other.
What it takes
Dr. Angela Clark, president of Goldfarb School of Nursing, said the twin phenomenon doesn’t surprise her, even if the numbers do.
The best nurses, she said, combine scientific rigor with something more difficult to teach.
“Then they mix that with empahy,” she said, “and to me, that makes the best nurse.”
As for why five sets of twins all ended up at Goldfarb at once, Clark sees it as something beautifully simple:
“You have something good, you call your sibling and tell them about it,” she said. “But they’re doing that with their career. They’re doing that with who they choose to be in this world.”
The timing matters beyond the novelty. The United States continues to face a significant nursing shortage — a gap that existed well before the pandemic and has only deepened since.
Goldfarb is currently graduating more nurses than at any point in its history, with multiple program tracks, including an accelerated option, a weekend program, and full-ride scholarships designed to remove financial barriers to entry.
One more pair
Just when it seems all the twins have been accounted for, there is one more pair to mention.
His name is Mr. Barnes. He’s Goldfarb’s resident therapy dog — officially the school’s mental health support mascot — there to help students decompress during one of healthcare’s most demanding academic programs.
And yes, even Mr. Barnes has a twin.
All those pairs, learning side by side. It turns out the best thing someone can bring to a career caring for others is someone who has been caring for them all along.
If you know someone making a difference, email Mike Bush at mbush@ksdk.com.