Yes, we know — we look about twelve. Bear with us.
And we mean that literally. Here's the story of why a marriage therapist and a voiceover actress started a movement.
Yes, we know — we look about twelve. Bear with us.
For over 20 years, couples walked into Joe's office for marriage counseling. But by the time most of them arrived, it wasn't really marriage counseling anymore — it was divorce counseling. They'd been struggling for years before they ever asked for help.
And underneath almost every story was the same quiet ache. "We're not having fun anymore." "We don't know how to have fun anymore." These couples knew about physical intimacy. They knew about emotional intimacy. But they'd completely forgotten the one that holds the other two up — recreational intimacy.
Marriages don't fall apart because couples stop loving each other. They fall apart because they stop playing together.
At the same time, Joe kept hearing something else — this time from single young adults. They didn't want to get married at all. Marriage looked miserable to them. It looked like the end of fun, and a coin-flip that ends in divorce.
That broke our hearts. Because we know marriage can be the most fun thing in the world. So we created Rec Your Marriage with two goals: help married couples keep playing — and show the next generation that marriage isn't where fun goes to die. It's where it can grow up.
We've been married 15+ years — and not without our own rough patches. After kids, our marriage quietly went transactional instead of transformational. We became excellent teammates at running a household and forgot how to be playful partners.
Then we got intentional about recreational intimacy. We started feeding it every single week — like an appetite the marriage needs, not a luxury it earns. And the sparks came back.
That's why we can teach this with a straight face. We've mastered play in our marriage. Not perfectly — nobody does — but on purpose. And we want that for you.
Life's too short to skip the fun photo shoots.
Co-founders, husband and wife, and proof that opposites don't just attract — they make a pretty great team.
A Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (LMFT) for over 20 years, Joe has spent his career helping couples find their way back to each other. He's spoken at marriage conferences and churches, and he's the one who named the missing piece: recreational intimacy.
On the Recreational Intimacy scale, Joe is an Active type — give him a pickleball court and a scoreboard and he's a happy man.
Kristin is a professional voiceover actress (yes — all the weird voices), "mom genius" (coined by Joe), and a speaker who's a regular favorite at mom groups. She brings the warmth, the humor, and the real-life perspective that keeps Rec Your Marriage human.
On the Recreational Intimacy scale, Kristin is a Cozy type — a blanket, a movie, and zero plans is her love language.
We've got three kids and a small zoo — a golden retriever, a leopard gecko, and a goldfish. Life is loud, busy, and full. Which is exactly why we practice what we preach.
When we're playing, you'll find us being total card sharks, getting competitive over board games, pretending we're going pro at pickleball, going to concerts, and generally being sillier than two adults probably should be. That's the point.
We Rec our family too — not just our marriage.
Start where every couple should — by finding out how you're each wired to play.
Take the free quiz →