Our first dance · September 17, 1999 · Baton Rouge
Happy anniversary
27 years
September 17, 1999 – 2026
Together since 1995 · Married since 1999
For Faye
Two daughters, one grandson, twelve front doors, and the same wedding knife still in the drawer.
We met in 1995 on the exercise bikes at the Southeastern Louisiana University gym in Hammond. You were 19 and I was a computer kid from Baton Rouge. We got married in Baton Rouge on September 17, 1999, and two years later Mia showed up on the exact same day, so we’ve never had an anniversary to ourselves. We went from Baton Rouge to Jackson to Minnesota, rented and bought and rented and bought again, and raised two girls who turned out to be their own kind of amazing. It hasn’t always been easy. We’re still here. This page is the short version.
Our story
Hammond, Louisiana
The campus gym at Southeastern Louisiana University. You were on the exercise bike next to mine, and we struck up a conversation. Our first date was Def Comedy Jam. For your first birthday with me, I gave you a bottle of Sunflowers perfume a day early, because I couldn’t wait. You loved it, and I loved how you smelled.
September 17, 1999
Married by Minister Jim Sawyer at Sherwood Presbyterian Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Two Jims at the altar. Your cousins gave us a Cutco carving knife, and I still think of the wedding every time I use it.
September 17, 2001
We didn’t plan it that way. It just became our way of never having an anniversary date to ourselves.
Baton Rouge to Jackson, Mississippi
We left Baton Rouge for a contract in Jackson and rented a house on Myrtle Street in Belhaven, the neighborhood where The Help was set and partly filmed. Then I started a business there with a friend. Neither of us loved Mississippi or being broke.
December 2004
We moved north for a fresh start. I started a new job and crashed on your parents’ couch in Osseo until we found our own place. Minnesota became home.
May & June 2006
On Friday, May 26, you adopted James, and she picked her own new name: James Alexander Carter. A month later we closed on our little house in Richfield. I sent the listing to my dad as “Faye’s birthday present.” We stayed almost ten years.
February 2012
A hard trip for a sad reason, but I got to meet the Prime Minister of Belize and thank him for his best export: you.
September 14, 2012
Lace was the theme, so there was lace. You told me more than once it was the best anniversary we’d ever had.
July 2014
Caves Branch in the jungle, snorkeling off South Water Caye, and a picture of our family in a cage inside the jaguar enclosure. The longest I’d ever been away from work, and I didn’t miss it.
May 7, 2015
You turned 40, and flowers showed up at your office at LifeSpan. From me. You’d only started there as a therapist that February.
April 2016
I built you a birthday website two weeks early, then built Faye-Marie.com so people could hear you sing. That July you started singing again.
April 2019
After Bloomington, St. Paul, and Edina, we were tired of renting. We bought a house in Minnetonka, and we’re still in it.
September 2020
Park Point, Glensheen, and a car that shook so bad I was about to call a tow truck. You noticed the missing lug nut first.
December 2023
Roman was born, and suddenly I was Pawpaw and you were Grandma.
September 17, 2026
Still choosing each other.
“You’re my other half.”
1995 – 2026
From a gym in Hammond to a house in Minnetonka, with Belize never far away.
Three state capitals along the way: Baton Rouge, Jackson, and St. Paul.
Home
She was mine first, and then she was ours. You adopted her in 2006, and she chose the name James Alexander, after me and Alexander the Great. She went to Le Cordon Bleu, cooked under Jack Riebel at The Lexington, and she’s a mom now. She’s the one who painted the Bloomington rental’s living room with you until it was super comfy, and the one who helped me put new shocks on your truck.
Born on our second anniversary, which means September 17 was always her day too. You hung balloons all the way down her walk to school for her 12th birthday. She started making fursuits as a kid, turned it into a real business, baked your birthday cake in 2024, and moved into her own place on Father’s Day 2025. She also got me hooked on 3D printing, so you can blame her for that.
Roman Alexander, our grandson and James’s boy, born December 2023. James picked Alexander for herself, and now he carries it on. To him I’m Pawpaw and you’re Grandma.
Kitten Boot Camp in 2010. A cat named Kenway whose street name was Buster. A kitten I named Piston Angry. Then the dogs: Heidi, who we still miss, and Lily, our best companion, who shed on everything and loved us completely, even if she never once trusted me to hand her a treat.
Your mom and dad, who took us in when we got to Minnesota and fed us arroz con pollo. Your brothers. Our friends. The people who showed up to help every time we moved, which was a lot.
The album
We came north for a fresh start. It turned into home.
Lake Superior · Duluth, January 2017
A short list
September 17, 2026
Faye,
Thirty-two years ago you were on the exercise bike next to mine. 27 years ago you married me. I did the math and you’ve been with me more than half your life, which seems like a bad deal for you, but you keep showing up anyway.
I think about that question you asked me way back. Was I being the person I wanted to be? I wasn’t. It took me a while to answer it, and some days I’m still working on it.
We’ve done a lot. Baton Rouge, Jackson, your parents’ couch, Richfield, three rentals in three years, and finally this house. Two girls who turned out to be exactly themselves, and better than we could’ve planned. A grandson. Too many cars, I know. Dogs shedding on everything.
It hasn’t been easy and I’m not going to pretend it was. We’re both stubborn and we both feel things hard. But when it counts you’re the one who notices the missing lug nut. You’re the one who packs the boxes right.
I still use the knife from our wedding. Every time I clean it I think about how young we were and how little we knew. I’m glad we figured out enough.
Thank you for sticking with me. You’re my other half. I love you more than I’m any good at saying, so I built you a website again 😊
Happy anniversary, gial.
Jim
Married 9,862 days