• Anne Wallace Allen ©️ Seven Days
• Dan and Trina Webster

As a mom of two little kids, Trina Webster was already struggling for rest when her husband's lifelong snoring worsened in middle age, shattering the peace of the marital bed.

"It was like sleeping with a broken alarm clock," Trina said of her spouse, Dan. Once awoken, she'd lie there "wondering when it's going to happen again."

Trina decamped to the living room sofa of their Shelburne home, but that didn't help. Dan's snoring was so loud that the baby monitor in the kids' room picked up the din coming through the closed bedroom door.

"There was nowhere to run," Trina said. Household harmony was on the line.

The grating noise of snoring is often caused by the improper flow of air over tissues in the throat. Dan underwent painful and expensive throat surgery, but his snoring soon returned. Then he started reading clinical papers and discovered that dentists were treating snoring and mild sleep apnea with a mouth guard that moves the jaw slightly forward in a way that opens a sleeper's airway. The mouth guard wasn't available over the counter in the U.S., but Dan ordered one online from Canada. Overnight, he said, the problem disappeared.

"I put it in, I went to bed, and when I woke up the next morning, Trina was like, 'You didn't make a single sound,'" Dan said.

Dan and Trina, who have been together since 1992 when they were students at Colorado College, did some research and found a report that claimed 80 million people in the U.S. snore. They saw in their own ordeal an opportunity to help other couples stay under the same covers at night.

In 2008, Dan started working with a California dentist who helped create a mouth guard and a designer who could make the device out of plastic.

After creating 18 prototypes, the group came up with ZQuiet, a mouth guard that's available without having to go to the dentist. It took a year for them to get their product through the regulatory hurdles associated with creating a patented over-the-counter medical device.

The mouth guard went on the market in 2009 and was quickly a hit. By 2011, Dan had left his job in financial services to focus on the growing company, Sleeping Well, which is still based at the family's compact three-bedroom home on a cul-de-sac.

The Websters, who started out advertising ZQuiet on cable TV, said they've since sold millions of the device, which retails for $69. The two, who are the company's only employees aside from contract workers, declined to provide yearly sales and revenue figures.

The pair are committed to keeping their company in the U.S. The mouth guards are manufactured from medical-grade rubber in Illinois; the Sleeping Well customer service team answers the phones in Maine. Fulfillment workers ship the devices from a warehouse in Kentucky.

In an Amazon search for "snore reducing aids," ZQuiet comes up as the No. 2 bestseller, surpassed in sales only by Breathe Right nasal strips.

Sleeping Well now offers a small array of other snore-reduction devices, including nasal strips, and has received thousands of appreciative letters from customers whose relationships were torn asunder — at least at night — by snoring. Most are from men, and many mention grateful girlfriends. One said his snoring was audible from outside the house.

"It is so great to sleep through the night without getting pushed or poked to wake up because I'm snoring," another said. One man described his long journey through doctor's visits, prescription nose sprays and nose strips — none of which solved the problem.

"It took me 30 years to win the girl of my dreams, and then my snoring nearly banished me to sleeping in another bedroom," wrote Kevin in Colorado. "I thank you, and my girlfriend really thanks you."

On Amazon, the device has elicited mixed reviews. There are complaints that the mouth guard isn't form-fitted and is initially uncomfortable. "Most of them are awful painful, huge, annoying, smelly. This guard is the best option of an unfortunate solution," one says. "This guard is expensive, for what it does and for the amount of material used. However, it's a USA product so I can overlook the high cost."

Snoring is the stuff of cartoons and comic sketches, but it's no joke for the people who are jolted out of a sound sleep by the noise. In some cases, snoring is a symptom of obstructive sleep apnea, when the upper airway closes off altogether and breathing lapses. The condition briefly deprives the sleeper of oxygen and is viewed as a risk for serious health problems such as high blood pressure, diabetes and depression. It's even linked to strokes and heart attacks.

Snorers are often advised to avoid sleeping on their backs, to lose weight and to avoid alcohol. When those measures don't work, snoring-related relationship ruptures are next. Along with disturbances caused by small children or pets, snoring is a leading sleep hazard. It can result in what St. Johnsbury marriage counselor David Helfand calls "a sleep divorce," with one party heading to the couch or another bedroom.

That separation can be bad news for relationships. Skin-on-skin contact with a partner releases the hormone oxytocin and endorphins that feel good and strengthen emotional bonds, Helfand said. That's true beyond sex: Sleeping side by side provides a dose of togetherness that's critical in busy people's lives, Helfand said.

"One of the few times that couples get to physically connect is sleeping in bed," Helfand said. "It's a sense of intimacy and connection that is hard to re-create."

Trina and Dan agree. They see their relationship as strong, but it did sustain some damage when Dan was snoring.

"It really started chipping away at us," Trina said. "I was really frustrated with him. He felt badly about it, but he was sleeping through it."

These days, the Websters said, harmony prevails. Trina said she reads every review and letter of thanks and responds to as many as she can. If customers are unhappy with the mouth guard, ZQuiet sends them a refund. After 16 years in business, the couple said the success stories are the most fulfilling aspect of their work.

"We save marriages and relationships," Trina said.