Julie BaumgardnerThere are 1.4 million married couples in the United States who not only live together but work together.
Robin and Michael McKenna were part of those ranks for 10 years while they ran the family business in Savannah, Ga.
“My husband was working in corporate America,” said Mrs. McKenna. “We realized that we could either move around with his job or move to Savannah and help his father run the family business. We decided it would be fun to work together, and it would allow our children to grow up close to at least one set of grandparents.”
When people hear stories like this, it is not unusual to hear comments like, ‘I could never do that,’ or ‘Don’t you get tired of being around each other so much?’ or ‘How do you work together without killing each other?’ The McKennas actually found that they enjoyed working together.
“At one point, we moved into office space where my husband and I each had our own office,” said Mrs. McKenna. “One of our employees said, ‘I don’t know why you all have separate offices. You are always together.’ We laughed, but that’s the way we work. It wasn’t complicated for us to figure out how to work well together. I think we might be the exception to the rule; we actually like hanging wallpaper together.”