Couples working together make a tough job look easy

Careers are tough.

You work every day, deal with your boss and co-workers, maybe you’ve got a client you don’t like much or someone is trying to jump over you for that big promotion.

Marriage can be difficult, too. There are kids, finances and family. Maybe his friends are not her friends, or you don’t do enough things together — or you do too many things together. Either way, it’s a minefield. There’s a reason half of marriages end in divorce.

So, putting those two things together sounds like a horrible idea, right?

Not necessarily, according to several Maricopa couples enjoying marital bliss while working together.

Let’s face it, for this to work, the marriage must already be on solid footing. A rocky marriage multiplied by more hours together and fewer topics of conversation to distract each other equals, well, nothing good.

But if things are solid, such an arrangement can enhance a relationship and bring a couple even closer. It definitely works for some.

Kyle and Hannah Norby met in 2012 as students at Maricopa High School — he was a junior and she was a freshman — and have been together ever since. They both work at the high school, where she has been a culinary teacher since 2018. Two years ago, Kyle was hired by the school as a digital photography teacher.

It wasn’t the first time they have worked together, and they wouldn’t want it any other way.

“We’ve had pretty much all of our jobs together,” Hannah said. “We’ve worked together three different times. We worked at Copper Sky as lifeguards when we were in high school. Then when we moved to Las Vegas so I could go to culinary school, we worked at the same hotel. And now we’re together at MHS, so we’ve really never done anything but work together, so we don’t know anything else.”

Kyle said their shared careers fit perfectly into their outside lives.

“We get along really well, we go the same places and like the same things,” he said. “We get the same amount of time off at the same times of the year, so it works perfectly for us. And the personal never gets in the way of work.”

Maricopa Police Chief James Hughes also shares career and home lives. His wife Brandelyn is a recreation coordinator managing the new community center and senior programming. They met while working for the city about six years ago and were married in March 2019.

They find family gives them an opportunity to bond outside of work and their two teenage sons and 4-year-old daughter provide plenty of fodder for conversation.

“We have family dinner pretty much every night of the week, even if it’s a little later some nights because of work responsibilities,” Brandelyn said.

The chief said those dinners, and the conversations, are a huge part of building family bonds.

“That’s huge, it’s a big priority for us,” he said. “When you’re dealing with teenagers, sometimes they’re not saying a word; other nights, they’re dominating the conversation. As our daughter went from age 3 to 4, she has become more of a contributor to the conversations, rather than a detractor, so her role is growing, and that’s kind of cool. But what’s important is having everyone around the table together.”

That time also provides an opportunity for conversations that don’t center on work. That’s something that stood out to another couple working together — the ability to share work conversations, but then move on from them.

Tom and Zoyla Beckett both work in the Maricopa Unified School District — he is the director of human resources and she teaches Spanish at MHS. Tom said having parallel careers is a benefit to them.

“There is such a value to be able to share the vision and goals from the organization you’re working in,” he said. “You’re not feeling like your attention is divided because you’re both working in the same environment. There are not ‘your events’ or ‘my events’ it’s much more ‘we’ and ‘us.’ We drive to work together in the morning, and I take her home at night. That’s always been a great experience for me, being able to share that time every day.”

But Zoyla said there is a limit.

“Tom’s rule is that when the ride home is over, the shop talk is over,” she said. “And that’s fine with me. We have so many other things to talk about because we share a lot of interests.”

That is another common thread among these couples. Shared interests provide a way for them to bond over something other than their careers.

“We try to keep a balance,” Tom Beckett said. “It would be very easy to bring work home and keep it going all night long. We share our days and act as sounding board for each other, but we have diversions in our life that allow us to get away from shop talk. We enjoy walking, hiking, movies, tennis. We have an active lifestyle and are both healthy, and we are fortunate to have the diversions to allow us to share things other than work.”

The Hugheses agree. Since they both work for the city, they have Fridays off, and Brandelyn said those are date days for the couple while the kids are in school.

“We make it a point to go to lunch or go shopping for whatever home renovation we’re working on (they own two rental properties), and then it’s family time all weekend, whether it’s hiking or whatever we’re doing,” she said.

James echoed the theme of shared interests.

“We also have common interests outside of work that allow us to change our focus away from the city,” he said. “We like to stay active. We’re both into home renovations and upkeep and management of the rental properties. Brandi manages them, and I swing a hammer. So, we’re not just at home worrying about what’s happening with the city of Maricopa. We trust the people we work with and that allows us to leave it behind and still have peace of mind.”

The Norbys said they do talk a lot about work, primarily picking each other’s brains for ways to do better for their students, but also about larger issues.

“We do talk a lot about stuff after school,” Hannah said. “We talk about our students’ projects. I want to hear about his day and he about mine. If we have a kid that did really well on something, we want to share that with each other. We’re also interested in school politics and try to watch the Governing Board meetings, so we know what’s happening on a larger scale.”

But much like Tom Beckett’s moratorium on shop talk when the commute home is over, the Norbys draw a line.

“Especially if we are traveling, we try to keep it off school,” Kyle said. “Weekends are the same. We try not to bring our laptops home on weekends so we can leave work at the school. We really like to take Saturdays and Sundays to recharge. We found that we were doing it too much early on and it got to be too much.”

But the gist of it is, the things that make any good marriage work apply to making one work when sharing a career with a spouse. James Hughes said for he and his wife, it’s being aligned personally.

“I think the fact that our personalities mesh well is a big plus,” he said. “Neither of us are prone to gossip. We’re not prone to negativity, and we’re not on top of Facebook and things like that, so we really tend to have good, positive conversations.”

The Becketts say being friends before dating and marriage has bolstered their relationship both in marriage and career.

“I think people in education love people and are compassionate,” Tom said. “Educators tend to gravitate toward one another and find admirable traits in one another. It might be harder if one of us was in a profession that didn’t, so our profession has certainly helped our relationship.”

Zoyla thinks it takes a special kind of relationship to make such an arrangement work.

“We couldn’t do it if we didn’t respect each other’s jobs,” she said. “If I say something about my classroom, and he’s not listening to me as a spouse but rather as the HR person, that can create problems. It takes a special person to respect the boundaries of each other’s job but still be supportive of what they’re doing.”

The Norbys are on board with that sentiment.

“It’s not for everyone,” Hannah said. “Lots of people tell us they couldn’t do it.”

“It takes a certain kind of relationship,” Kyle agreed. “We grew up together, so it’s a little different for us than most couples who work together. Aside from the time after I graduated from high school, we’ve always been around each other all the time. But I really think it takes a special relationship to make this kind of arrangement work.”

This story was first published in the February edition of InMaricopa magazine.