Jevon Grimes can still remember the way his teammate, Kerry McQuarrie, passed the soccer ball back to him nearly a decade ago.
“I knew when I got the pass back it was a perfect pass,” Grimes said. “It was like how coaches teach you to do it. It was so perfect. All I had to do was kick the ball in. So I immediately thought, ‘This is somebody I want on my team. This is somebody whose going to make me look like a better soccer player than I really am.’”
Now, nine years after that soccer game, Grimes, 40, and McQuarrie, 37, are becoming lifelong teammates in June at Harwelden, in front of about ninety family members and friends.
Soccer has always played a role in the couple’s relationship. They met playing on a co-ed team through their work at TV Guide. They continued to play as their relationship developed, and while neither currently plays, they both still enjoy watching the game. They will be in Rome, a city known for its obsession to soccer, on their honeymoon during June’s World Cup.
Grimes and McQuarrie not only share a passion for soccer but also dogs and traveling. But marriage, they both admit, was not always something they saw in their future.
“When we first started dating we both were like, ‘I don’t want to get married,’” recalled McQuarrie, now an IT manager at TV Guide. “And then I kind of got to a phase where I was like, ‘I’m wrong.’”
But Grimes was still not sold on the idea, added McQuarrie.
“I think we were kind of slow to get engaged because we have a pretty tight knit group of friends and it seemed like a lot of them were getting divorced,” said Grimes, now a sales manager at AT&T.
Besides, Grimes and McQuarrie both said, they didn’t know what would change between them, as they’d been living together for years. But unlike other friends who were breaking up, McQuarrie and Grimes kept going strong.
“A lot of people told us we made a good team,” Grimes said, and he soon realized he met the person he wanted to spend his life with.
In September, Grimes surprised McQuarrie with a quick trip to Eureka Springs where he proposed to her, before they headed to Dallas to visit her family. McQuarrie noted that her family knew about the proposal before it happened.
“It was really nice. I had no idea,” McQuarrie said. “I mean, after 8 and a half years, I just figured, I guess this is how it’s going to be.”
The couple made a creative decision early on to determine who was the “boss” in the relationship. They played paper-rock-scissors to see who would be in charge for the next four years of the relationship. Grimes won two out of three. Under the terms, McQuarrie was to be “boss” for six months at the conclusion of the four years. Neither has happened, though.
“It’s been like eight years since that happened, and he still says he’s the boss because I never do what he says,” McQuarrie explained.
“I’m still waiting for the four years to start,” Grimes added laughing.
Editor’s note: Jevon & Kerry married on June 19th. The picture above was taken by Rebekah Greiman, prior to the wedding. The picture below, taken by Dennis Leech, was taken at their wedding.
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