Yuen: Identical twins finish high school as valedictorian and salutatorian

Adriana Mathiason jokes that she and her sibling aren’t trying to be the creepy twins from “The Shining,” indistinguishable and inseparable in every way. Yet some similarities can’t be overlooked, especially now that she and her identical twin, Ruby, have graduated with GPAs within a hair of each other — and at the very top of their class.

That means the Mathiasons can claim having both a 2025 valedictorian and a salutatorian in the family. Final transcripts came in Monday, showing Ruby graduated from Richfield High School with a GPA of 4.562, and Adriana finished just 0.013 of a point behind.

Are they academically competitive? Not really. But it’s natural for one twin to measure themselves up against the other, says Ruby, who is the younger of the two. (Adriana was born 20 minutes earlier.)

“I felt like I was always trying to catch up to Adriana,” Ruby says. “But I honestly think it keeps us sharp. We push ourselves to be the best versions of each other. We’re constantly chasing each other in different regards.”

Rivalry can be intense among twins. It doesn’t help when the outside world tends to view twins as a single unit, or foils of each other that need to be ceaselessly compared and contrasted.

Their mom, Brigette Mathiason, says the twins have always supported each other’s development, sometimes without even knowing it. Ruby was the first to learn to read, well before kindergarten. But Adriana was absorbing it, too, just more quietly, alongside her sibling.

As they grew into their adolescence, Ruby had to fight insecurities after seeing Adriana get a job and pass her driving test first, beating Ruby at what they call “the hallmarks of being a stable, independent teen.” Yet Ruby also found an anxiety-soothing calmness in Adriana.

Adriana said Ruby does the same for her.

“It’s kind of like when there’s turbulence on the plane, and you see the flight attendants are still talking and walking around,” Adriana says. “When I start panicking, Ruby is sending me TikToks, and I’m like, ‘Oh, we’re OK. We’re in the same boat.’ It’s helpful to see someone else being confident, and it’s easy to follow in their footsteps.”

The Mathiasons don’t believe in twin telepathy but are known to finish each other’s sentences or simultaneously blurt out the same thing, and yes, I witnessed this firsthand. (If you’re wondering how to tell them apart, Adriana has the purple hair, nine piercings and sparrow tattoos, while Ruby is more of a clean slate.)

“They don’t really compete with each other, but push each other,” Brigette says. “Sometimes they’ll get frustrated, but it’s rare that they have a blowout fight. They generally want each other to succeed and have always been that way.”

The pride that her twins have in themselves and in each other is what makes Brigette tear up. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted, and that’s all that’s ever mattered to me,” she says.

From their mom, a real estate agent, the twins say they inherited her knack for navigating social norms and talking up strangers. Their dad, Jeff, a computer scientist, imparted his ability to reason and debate.

During the throes of the pandemic, Adriana understood when Ruby came out as gender nonbinary. As a 16-year-old, Ruby gave a TED Talk about their journey, a speech interspersed with examples of gender expansiveness and self-expression throughout history. That led to Ruby gracing the cover of a 2023 issue of Minnesota Women’s Press.

The twins’ school guidance counselor, Sara Linde, remembers doing a double-take when she spotted the free feminist magazine while leaving a restaurant. “What the heck is this?” she remembers thinking. “I’ve done this job for 25 years, and I’ve never had a student do this.”

Linde says the Mathiason twins are well-known among their class of 274 students. They have their own close social circles but are friends with everybody and have always demonstrated a maturity and curiosity beyond their years.

“Their uniqueness is celebrated,” Linde says. “They just have a confidence you don’t see in every high school student, and I think that was nurtured by their family. They’re very bright kids to begin with, but their interests, along with their brightness, were supported by their parents. They’re a lot more than their test scores.”

For Ruby, that’s meant fostering a love of Latin dance, playing the drums and performing in theater shows. Ruby has clinched lead roles in the high school plays (Frankenstein and Juliet, to name a couple). Adriana works at the Nokomis Library and has plunged into her obsession with live music. She DJs for Radio K at the University of Minnesota.

The 18-year-olds commend supportive teachers and a plethora of academically rigorous options that allowed the siblings to earn college credit while they were still in high school. Adriana spent much of her senior year at the University of Minnesota through a postsecondary enrollment program, while Ruby completed college-level courses while never leaving the high school.

While they both found the grind of coursework to be enriching, school wasn’t always easy. Calculus was “the worst thing ever,” according to Ruby, who says it’s tough to persevere when bored. But Ruby learned to channel their inner bravado before a test by performing rituals that athletes are known to do leading up to a big game. “I put my headphones on, I listen to a good song, and I sway back and forth,” they said.

Come fall, the twins will navigate a new life apart. Adriana will study at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, while Ruby is headed to Carleton College in Northfield. For a half a minute, the twins flirted with the idea of attending the same college.

“It would be comfortable, and that would be the problem,” Ruby says. “I’ve always had somebody who understands what I’m saying. It would be good for us to step outside of that.”

There’s peace in knowing that these two will always have each other.