It is currently thought that chronic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) may be due to the action of an as-yet unidentified external agent on genetically predisposed individuals. While genetic influence on the development of the disease has been widely studied, very little is known about the possible environmental agents that could influence its development. One example of the influence of environmental agents could be the development of chronic IBD in a husband and wife. We describe the case of a married couple; after more than 30 years of cohabitation, the wife developed fistulizing Crohn's disease and, 7 years later, the husband developed ulcerative proctosigmoiditis. Currently, approximately 70 cases have been described in the international literature but none have been reported in Spain. We discuss the characteristics of our patients compared with those described in published reports and stress the importance of describing these cases for the future identification of a possible external agent.