Chip was also extremely kind and giving. I swear every time we’d see a homeless guy, Chip would stop and talk to him. Sometimes he’d give him money. Sometimes he’d give him a job for the day. Heck, if the weather was bad, he’d even put him up in a hotel.
We’d be walking downtown, and I’d hear, “Chip. Hey, Chip!” and I’d turn to see a person approaching us who, frankly, might have scared me if I was walking downtown by myself. Chip wouldn’t be scared. He’d know the guy by name: “James! How’s it going, brother?” It seemed as if every homeless guy in Waco knew Chip Gaines.
On the flip side, every banker in Waco knew Chip too. And he talked to those two very different groups of people exactly the same way. There was never any difference in Chip’s demeanor. His enthusiasm for life and work and people was just infectious, and he surprised me with it again and again. At least once a day I caught myself thinking, Wow, this guy!
Best of all, as happy as Chip Gaines was, he seemed happiest around me.
I’m a generally happy person. My mom says I was a happy baby. But it’s a fact—I was always happiest around Jo. And I still am.
One pretty amazing thing we learned early on was that the more time we spent together, the better our relationship was. I think a lot of couples feel the need to get away from each other now and then, to take little breaks, and they come back after a girls’ weekend or a guys’ fishing trip or something all refreshed and happy to reconnect because they missed each other.
We were just the opposite, and still are. We seem to give each other energy. We function better together than we do apart, and I don’t think either one of us has ever felt the urge to say, “I need a break from you.”
Don’t get me wrong; we’ve certainly had our share of disappointment and arguments, but we just always wanted to tackle our issues together.
The two of us never talked about marriage during that first year we were together, but I knew pretty quickly that we were in this for the long haul, and I almost had to convince myself that it was okay to be in love with this man. I kept reminding myself, “With Chip, my life isn’t gonna look like what I thought it was gonna look like—but there will be adventure, and there will be some fun.”
My parents were the type of people who locked their doors and had an alarm system. For my whole life they encouraged me to go after what I wanted, to get a good education, even to go to New York for that internship. But they also encouraged me to use caution—and I did.
Chip was the polar opposite. For example, whenever we went out shopping or to restaurants, he would leave his keys in the car. Who leaves their keys in the car in today’s world? It was a real problem for us for a while, because my first instinct when I got out of the car was to lock the doors. So we’d come back after dinner and realize I’d locked Chip’s keys in the car again.
I remember that! In college, I would not only leave my keys in the car, but half the time I would forget and leave it running.
What’s ironic about Jo and my parents is Jo’s parents were pretty much hippies in their younger years. Her dad served in Vietnam, and he was this tall, quiet, lanky guy with glasses, and her mom was this vivacious Korean woman who just loved life. They both have the best stories. When I first saw pictures of the two of them from before Jo was born, they looked like John Lennon and Yoko Ono. They were right in the thick of all that went on during the sixties. But despite that youthful “rebellion,” they turned out to be the kind of cautious parents who were concerned with traditions and playing it safe.
My parents both grew up in a little bitty town called Archer City, Texas, and they were straight as an arrow, but they left the garage door open all day, even when they were out. They wouldn’t even think about locking the doors. My mom saw an upside to everything, and I think that’s part of what made me so optimistic and adventurous.
I have to say, I’m very thankful that Jo’s parents were all right with us being together. They could have said, “This guy is not gonna work, and you need to move in a different direction.” And honestly, Jo was so obedient that, just for the sake of responsibility or obligation or whatever you want to call it, she might have broken it off. But her parents, even early on, were supportive and encouraging. And my parents were of course supportive of her. They still say to this day she is the best thing that ever happened to me.
Despite all the differences between my dad and Chip, Dad knew that he had a good heart, and he saw something in Chip that he knew was right for me.
People say opposites attract, and I think the fact that Chip and I were together for anything beyond a first date proves that point pretty well. But the fact that we stayed together goes to something a little deeper. The fact that we were opposites on the surface didn’t negate the fact that we were both raised by loving parents, in loving families, and that we both love our families dearly. Our roots were important to both of us, and that one common bond, to me, plays a big role in what has kept us together.
Not that we’re perfect or anything. Don’t get the wrong idea. There were times when we would fight like cats and dogs. And Jo’s tough. But there was just something about her. We’d work through it. Whatever stupid mistake I made—and there was plenty of stuff that set her off—we’d find a way to get through it, and we’d wind up being even closer to each other in the end. Every time.
Jo was more perfect for me than I ever could have imagined. After we’d been dating about a year, I honestly couldn’t imagine my life without her. So I decided to do the traditional thing and went and asked Jo’s dad for her hand in marriage. Honestly, that was one of the best days of my life. I couldn’t have been more nervous, and he was just so supportive. Both of our families were supportive. And as soon as I was over that hurdle, I started planning a way to surprise her and ask her to marry me in a way that she’d never forget.
Chip told me he’d been invited to a private concert, and he asked me if I wanted to go. He was vague about what kind of music it was or what this concert was all about, but I didn’t care. I pretty much wanted to go anywhere Chip wanted to take me.
“Okay, great!” he said. “Well, you’ve got to get really dressed up, and it’s in Archer City.”
I knew that both of Chip’s parents had gone to high school in that sweet little town, which was the setting for Larry McMurtry’s famous novel, The Last Picture Show, and the movie of the same name starring Cybill Shepherd and Jeff Bridges. The old theater that inspired the book and film was still there, and I knew they had concerts in that venue from time to time, so nothing seemed unusual about Chip’s request, even though we would have to drive four hours to get there. I honestly didn’t suspect a thing. I was just excited.
We wound up rolling into Archer City at about seven o’clock that night. But instead of pulling up near the theater, Chip pulled into this little shopping center and drove us around to a door in the back.
“Chip, where are you taking me?” I asked.
“Just come on,” he said. He was all smiles.
I was thinking, Well, this must be a super private concert. He took me into this unmarked hallway, and at first he seemed kind of lost, as if he was trying to figure out where he was going. Then all of a sudden Chip fell down to one knee and sort of wobbled to one side. I thought he was having a heart attack or something.
“Chip? Are you okay?” I said.
I was wearing a peacoat—it was cold out—and when I knelt down, my knee pinned the bottom of my coat to the ground so I couldn’t sit back up straight. I had to put my hand against the wall so I could lean and get the jacket out from under me.
Then he looked at me. I realized he was down on one knee on purpose. He got real calm, and he took my hand, and he said, “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” I was in total shock—even more so than I was on my dad’s driveway basketball court when Chip first said, “I love you.”