This is pretty conclusively addressed by the Bell Inequalities and empirically tested. It’s absolutely counter-intuitive and feels “wrong” but it is definitely how our universe operates.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9OM0jSTeeBg A relatively short but decent explainer for Bell’s Theorem and the Nobel prize winning experiment to successfully test it.

The important distinction here (and I get it, analogies are always imperfect) is that the photograph analogy has “hidden variables”. That is, each half is fixed at the moment of their separation and you just don’t know what’s in the envelopes until you open one. That’s not how entangled particles work though, and which “half” is which is not determined until the instant of measurement, at which point the state of both are known and fixed.

Well I know these people and they’re great plus they’re married now :)