Kenilworth couple vies for title of America’s Favorite Couple to support adoption expenses

Kenilworth resident Kylee Rader let The Record North Shore in on a secret that not even her husband, David, knows:

They’re in the quarterfinals of the America’s Favorite Couple contest. 

Hosted by Hollywood’s Jeff and Emilie Goldblum, the vote-based contest playfully markets itself as the search for “the ultimate love story!” 

Contestants like Kylee and David Rader are competing against other couples for a chance to win $20,000 and have their relationship celebrated in an advertorial for Variety magazine.

When Kylee Rader stumbled upon the opportunity on her social media, she thought about the endless fun she could have with it: “‘Oh, I’ll just enter this, how silly will that be,’” she told The Record of the words swirling through her mind at the time.

As she read more about it, she saw that each member of the public could vote once for free or could pay to cast multiple votes, with the money going to two charities: the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank and Oceana, a nonprofit dedicated to ocean conservation. 

Piqued by the charitable nature of the contest, Rader considered it more seriously. 

“We’re in the middle of an international special-needs adoption, which a lot of people don’t realize is just very costly, and it’s costly for good reasons — all the oversight that goes into adoption, ensuring vulnerable children are cared for and go to the right homes — so I was like, ‘You know $20,000 would be helpful while we’re going through this process,’” she explained of her family’s personal journey and motivations. “Even on the backend, there’s lots of therapies and medical needs that he will have, so those funds could help with that.”

Still, Rader put her lighthearted twist on the whole thing, opting to keep the process hidden from her husband and keep him on his toes. 

“What really cracked me up was the fact that, if we win, we would have to be in a photoshoot for Variety magazine,” she said. “Where my husband is going to laugh is I hate getting my photo taken, but the idea of just randomly dropping on my husband, ‘Oh by the way, we won America’s Favorite Couple, which is $20,000, and we have to fly to Arizona to do a photoshoot — the surprise and the complete like, “What!?’ on his face (would be) well worth it.”

While one might think Rader hasn’t been rallying the troops — friends and family — to cast their votes in order to keep the secret, that’s not the case.

Family and friends are in on the secret and have not “spilled the beans,” as Rader said. She’s even been posting on social media, which her husband doesn’t check often, and posted once on LinkedIn, which she describes as her “riskiest move yet” because he does tend to check the latter.

Her hope, she said, is that he had been too busy with work and the upcoming adoption to scroll through his feed.

At the time of her conversation with The Record, Rader had just finished running errands in preparation for her trip to India on Aug. 12 for the family’s adoptive son, toward whose care the prize would go. She was in second place and gearing up to text family and friends to cast more votes and bump them up to first.

And text and rally the troops she did: Per their contest profile (where votes are cast) and email confirmation from Rader, the couple made it to first place and locked in their spot in the quarterfinals of America’s Favorite Couple, happening now through Aug. 21. 

As of Monday, Aug. 11, they are 13th in the quarterfinals. The top competitors from each quarterfinal group will be divided into semifinal groups, at which point votes will be reset and public voting will determine the first-place semifinalist from each group to advance to the finals.

Of note, competitors cannot see the profiles of their competition; they can only see their own rankings.

If they win, in addition to putting the money toward adoption expenses and their adoptive son’s care, Rader said they could also use some home repairs.

“On a much shallower level, … we had bought a home that had a rundown kitchen, and by rundown, I mean cabinet doors have literally fallen off,” she said. “Throughout the past three years, we’ve been like, ‘Oop, that one’s done,’ and it just falls. We were going to renovate the kitchen, but then we discovered how expensive adoption was.”

For Rader, adoption has been a priority for much of her life. She grew up around adoption with friends who’d been adopted and a vibrant adoption community within her church. 

Then, in high school, her family moved to the Philippines for her dad’s work.

“We lived really close to an orphanage there,” she said. “So, every weekend I would go volunteer in the baby ward. At a young age, I realized there’s such a great need for these babies, and for kids in general, to find homes.”

The seed had been planted, as Rader put it.  

“When I was dating my husband, probably very early on in the relationship, … like two months (in), I was like, ‘Oh, by the way, whoever I marry, I would really like them to consider adoption, just FYI.’

After getting married Kylee and David Rader discussed adoption on and off.

“I was able to have our other son biologically, but that actually ended up being a very difficult pregnancy and delivery that kind of made it abundantly clear that I shouldn’t get pregnant again,” she said. “And so that just accelerated the (adoption) plan, and then January 2024 is when we were like, all right … let’s do this.”

The couple’s adoption agency is based out of Alabama and their Home Study Agency, which helps determine the suitability of prospective adoptive parents and assists with education and preparation, is based in Evanston. 

Kylee and David Rader have already been building a community for their son, and themselves, in the North Shore.

Not only has the couple, neither of whom have any family in Illinois, been introducing themselves to any new neighbors and organizing and hosting dinners where people who are new to the North Shore can get to know each other, but they have also been connecting with fellow adoptive families.

“I have met a few other families now who have adopted, and once you hear about someone adopting, you find each other, or people are like, ‘Oh, you need to talk to this person,’” Rader said. “And, I think that’s the beauty of the smallness of the North Shore, to a certain extent: You can find that person. It’s not going to be hard.”

She continued, “So, I’ve already met some other adoptive moms and then on top of that, people are starting to be like, … ‘Oh, this family has boys who are Indian.’ It’s adding to our colorful life and diverse family, and so I love that our son is providing a new outlet for (connection with) even more people and opportunities within the North Shore.”

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