Getting to Know Each Other: The Real Story Starting with Door-to-Door Art Sales

Hi, I'm Matthew Greger.

And I'm Nancy Greger.

We have this new podcast called "We Should Probably Edit This." But we won't. Are you ready? Okay. Alright. Hi.

Hello.

So today's topic, we're gonna talk about when we met. And what it takes to get to know each other as a young couple. So how did we meet?

We met in Florida when we both thought it was a brilliant idea to sell art. You, you would sell art by going to people's homes, and you would bring like an assortment of different types of prints. I think they were all—

there were lithographs, etchings, and, and serigraphs.

And you would bring them to the people's homes and you kind of gave them the idea of seeing how the painting would look in their house, right?

And the idea was it was also supposed to be like an investment that would eventually go up in value. So the idea was, you know, we've all talked about— heard about Mary Kay or Shaklee or one of those, um thing. So this was the same principle but selling artwork.

Selling artwork. So we both joined this gallery, gallery, uh, and that was their intent. And that's how we met.

Yes, it was.

That's how we met.

That's how we met. And we ended up dating a little bit on and off back then. And then 2 years went by, and I reached out to you. By this time, 2 years went by, meaning we, we went out for a little bit, then we took like a 2-year— yeah, 2-year hiatus.

We went our separate ways for a little bit, um, and I moved to New York, and I decided to reach back out to him. And so I did this little technique where you, you take someone's last known address, and if they've moved—

well, you sent me a Christmas card.

Let me finish.

Okay.

You send somebody a Christmas card. I sent somebody a card, um, and what I did was on the envelope I put on there, uh, address change requested. So if he had moved, um, the card would come back to me and give me his new address. So I got it. That's exactly what happened, and the card came back to— because, you know, there was no Facebook back then. There There was no, you know, emails, nothing like that. So you had to do the old-fashioned way, and the old-fashioned way was using the postal service.

Well, that's your— that's some of your techniques for hunting down people anyway.

That's true. Um, so I got his new address, I sent— resent the card to his new address, and then he proceeded— he proceeded to call my parents.

Well, I was— I— let me step back of kind of what I was doing. So I was at that time of life, like, reevaluating some of the women that I have dated and, and that, and kind of narrowing down, you know. I was looking for a relationship to move forward, so I just kind of went down through my Rolodex of names, you know, and, and that card prompted me to, to, to reach out.

And so he did.

Give mom a call.

And so he calls my mom.

I meant to actually reach you, right?

Because you thought I was still living in Florida. With my parents and you reached out and my mom picked up the phone and you were talking to my mom and my mom knew who you were. But did my mom give you any intel?

Of course not.

Oh, she didn't.

Who's this guy? What is gonna—

my, my mother's like all— I would have to say pretty much a lot of mothers, that if someone comes looking for your children, you don't divulge any information. You will get the information you need from that individual, and you won't give them any clue as to whether or not you communicate with your kid, don't communicate with your kid, you know where they are, you don't know where they are. Um, but my mother told me, and I was like, oh, this is good. So I, I— he finally tracked me down. She gave me his phone number, uh, and then we started. But I was living in New York at the time, and you were still in—

I was still in Florida, right? But long story short, I mean, that was in the summer, um, we started talking to each other on a, on a consistent basis. And back then, you know, there wasn't cell phones and everything was long-distance charges. I think, I think we were racking up over $100 bills each month.

That was a lot.

That was a lot back then. We spent, we spent several, at least 2 or 3 times a week talking on the phone, like an hour at a time.

Yep.

You know, and it was just— and we haven't seen each other in over 2 years. You were there, and by Christmas time she came down, back down to Florida. We got engaged, and that following, um, June, June we were married.

We were married.

But as with any new relationship, you have to get to know each other.

You do.

And that can be a struggle at times when you come in with your perceived— there I go again, see that? That preconceived notions of how things are going to be?

I don't think there's preconceived notions. I do think that you have to give yourself enough time to get to know the other person. And I think us communicating by phone back then gave us a unique perspective, because when you're talking on the telephone, people don't see you. For you to convey your messages or convey your thoughts, you really have to know what you're saying. And you have to present yourself in a certain way that you can get across what it is that, you know, you're, you're meaning. And again, remember, this is no Zoom, no, no phones, FaceTime, nothing like that. So you really had to work.

You had to listen, you had to listen, you had to pay close attention. And I think, you know, we talked about a lot of different things.

We did. We talked to all kinds of different things, subjects, things that you would do if you had gone out on individual dates. To find things out. The pressure though of going on those dates and having expectations on either side wasn't really present, right? Because you were just talking on the phone. And so as much as long-distance calls were going to cost you money, it was a situation where you could still speak freely and you could still feel like there was no expectations of this going anywhere, right? You were just really just getting to know this person.

I don't remember exactly when. I want to say around somewhere around October. I think it was like you just knew this was the right person for you.

Well, it did help that we did date, so it wasn't like we didn't date. We did date, we just didn't date for very long before we said, you know, we kind of went our separate ways.

Timing wasn't right.

Timing wasn't right at that time.

But I remember calling you and you'd be at work, and I would call you at work. I don't know why I'd call you at work, but I'd call you at work and you were in that collection mindset a lot of times. And so when you came on, I said, okay, you're not collecting money from me. Hi, Nancy. You know, it's like it was a different thing. Yeah, you had a different tone on your voice when I would call at times.

It was good. So we got a chance to know each other a little bit. We— everyone thinks that we got married very quickly because we literally got engaged in June, in, in Christmas, and then we got married in June. And everyone's like, wow, you guys got married really fast. And, and I have to say, well, no, because we were talking for a very long time. It wasn't like we, you know, jumped into it. Um, so for us, there was— we had done a lot of legwork together to figure out what it is that we had in common, what it is we wanted, what it is we wanted to explore. And I think right around the time we were getting married, I had gone down to Florida to see whether or not moving back to Florida was an option for the two of us, or him coming up to New York.

Well, when you were up there for Christmas time, did you come back another time before I moved? I don't, I don't think so. I think we made the decision.

No, I, I did go down one other time. Uh, we looked at apartments, we looked at a couple of places together. I had gone down because we were also looking for wedding venues, wedding venues and that kind of stuff. And I finally just The whole wedding thing was all on my mom. I let her— you know what, but she loved it because she really didn't have an opportunity to have a wedding for herself when she got married. So my mother and my father did everything. They did everything. They found the band, they did the food, they got the— they had this huge cake with a little like fountain underneath.

I remember, I remember though, when it comes to the wedding, there was still like this You're still nervous about it. You don't enjoy— necessarily enjoy your own wedding as much as you should. And that would be the advice that I would give, is that don't get nervous and uptight about it. Just go and have a good time.

Well, that was a predestined to your uptightness anyway, you know.

Well, that's where it's like communication and us being different, right?

Correct.

And about what is correct. Did you just go and have a good time, or, or were you uptight at times?

I wasn't. I, I don't, I don't I don't recall that being the situation at all.

Okay.

What I do remember the most is it was god-awful hot in Florida, and I, and, and I was just like, you know, you're in this dress with veil and everything, and I was hot. And so I was more like, let's get into the air condition as quickly as we can. And taking pictures outside was just not what I would say. Yay! So that's what I remember the most, is it was unbelievably hot. I think our family had a good time, though it was primarily my family. You had one table. We must have had 10, maybe 15 tables. The Greger's were one table. The rest were—

mine had to come from all over the place. Yours were more local.

No, mine came from, from New York too. I have New Yorkers and, and some Floridians, so there was travel. Involved.

So, okay, okay, okay, okay. I mean, yes, you had a bigger family, but, but I did have a turnout of some friends and family too.

You did have a couple of friends who turned out. Yes.

Getting back to topic about getting to know each other, um, what do you think it took us to really— what did we need to do to get to know each other and to try to really understand the differences in, in each in how we are and what we're doing? And then what would you say that it takes for that other person to have maybe a little patience with the other one?

Uh, there's— I think it's— I don't— I wouldn't say that in our 20s we were very patient people. We were probably, um, let me rephrase this. I am not the patient person in this in this relationship. I tend to be very much off the fly, ready for a rumble at any moment in time, whereas you're much more calm at that.

And I'm analytical, and I'm the guy that's gonna be more in the back seat assessing the situation, right?

Whereas I'm like, let's just go. Yeah, just, just go, because, you know, sitting around would, would make me crazy. So I think we had to learn from each other, uh, how each one of us attacks a certain situation, how to navigate, how to navigate certain things around each other, and how to respond in a way that worked for both of us. I think to some extent you look back at how you grew up with your own mom and dad, how you experienced them and how you saw them. Yes, and how, how you saw how your parents and my Listen, I loved my mom and dad. I— my mom— my father has passed away, but I love my mom. But, uh, if I looked at their relationship, uh, it was a testament of things not to do. It wasn't anything about why you would do it. Like, I would say total opposite, literally totally opposite type of relationship that I wanted to have in my marriage. That wasn't my parents, no, weren't good. That wasn't a good role model in any way.

So what did you take from them then and try to bring into your own relationship?

I think based— the things that I learned about myself was that I really wasn't interested in changing anybody. Like, I had to like you and love you for who you were, because if I was going to try to change something, that's It doesn't work, and I learned that very, very early on.

Well, you can't go into a relationship thinking you're going to change somebody because it's just— it's—

if you think, oh, you know, no, but you don't know anything yet, right? Like, we, we—

but I mean, going into a relationship on the pretense that, oh, I can fix you isn't going to work.

Correct.

You know, so you either have to love the person the way they are, you know, you guys can grow together and learn from each other, but you can't go in there, in there expecting to change somebody.

No. And if that's how you looked at it, no. And you have to also be very strong about what it is you want and what you're worthy of. And if you feel that you can demand the very best for yourself, those are the kind of things—

I don't know if you can think that at 20, about demanding the best for yourself.

It depends. My father never ever said to me that I could never do anything I wanted to do. That wasn't my—

you couldn't—

you could— I could do whatever I wanted and I didn't need anybody's help to do it. Like, I set my mind on something, you can do it.

Um, but you're also trying to figure out— you're— besides getting married, we're also trying to figure out our careers and what we're going to do, um, in the very— in the beginning stages. So there's a lot going on.

There's a lot of give and take in the very beginning. There is a lot of give and take in the very beginning. There's a lot of transitions and things you have to navigate, but fundamentally I think we like to show— yeah, that we, you know, we had a tremendous amount of good feelings that the two of us could do a lot of things together. And I do think that for us, being away from either side of our parents was really probably one of the best things.

Yeah, because we chose to move to New York.

We chose to move back to New York. Now, my parents lived in— my parents were New Yorkers, but they moved to Florida. Your parents were already in Florida, right?

Um, and you know, that was a big decision to move because I had, I had a decent job that I was at, and I decided to take a chance to, to move to New York City and become a freelance designer at that time.

And, um, well, you worked in the printing You were—

you worked—

you had a job then with a printing company, right?

In Florida, First Dutch Printing.

And here in New York.

No, but in New York I started out freelancing. I didn't get back into printing right away. I was illustrating and freelancing at first. Remember, I was living in your cousin's apartment on the floor before we had our own— before we had our own place.

Well, we had to be married.

Yeah, because I moved up in February, um, and we got married in June.

So, and my parents would not allow us I don't know, it's not that they wouldn't allow us, but they would strongly discourage, right? It was strongly discouraged, right? And you were—

and you were more— you were living in your grandmother's apartment?

I was. I was living— my grandmother had a co-op, was a 2-bedroom, and she was— she'd only come up for maybe half the year, a couple of months out of the year she would come up. So I was living in her place.

You were more You were traditional in the aspect that you didn't want to disappoint your grandmother or anything about having someone living with you.

It wasn't about disappointment. It was more like just really focusing on my peace and how important was it for me to fight with it or just let it go. And I think at some point I just let it go because I, I said to myself, okay, living your little fantasy of what you believe, I'm not going to make that I'm not going to change that. Uh, we were getting married in June.

Yeah, I mean, well, we— like I said, I lived with your cousins, with my cousins, um, and then I was freelancing. And Tito. Yep, who played the drums. Um, so that was an interesting time trying to sleep and, and get myself used to things. And then we found our, our apartment.

Yep. Um, And you moved in first.

Yeah, well, yeah, we started buying stuff. Yeah, stupid things like a glass table. Um, don't ever buy a glass dining room table or a white couch.

Yep, those were no-nos.

Yes. So, so, um, we'd got that and I moved in there first before, before you did.

So it was— so that period in time was still, I think, a lot of us, both of us getting to know each other, differences, you You know, uh, when we finally did get married, we lived together, it was figuring out chores, things. Yeah, figuring out—

talk about chores—

who does what. Uh, it was, uh, cooking. That was a lot of fun, cooking.

Um, why was that fun?

Well, because our, our abilities to cook were completely different, you know.

Um, and our style of food, style of food, and what we would want to eat. I mean, it was just like— I mean, and you have to take that as a, okay, let's try different things. I mean, I enjoy trying different foods.

You were much more open about it than I was.

Yeah, you know, so much—

I was like, what? Like cabbage rolls. I remember the first time I made cabbage rolls, it came out okay, but I didn't know. I didn't know. And by the way, there was no internet, so you couldn't Google how do you make You had to look things up.

So you don't pre-cook the meat, um, or the rice, otherwise they come out all crumbly. He's like, you want them to like be molded together.

But at least I attempted it. At least I tried it. And I would, I would do— so, so the roles of each other, what did we do, how did we do it, um, melding together our wishes of what we wanted. Going on vacation, where were we gonna go? What were we gonna do?

Um, yeah, it's, it's, it's getting to understand— I mean, bathroom time, if you're sharing a bathroom, and, and what that means. Did we have one bathroom?

We had one.

We had one. We had one bathroom for a long time.

A long time. Long, long time.

Yes.

And we, we made it work.

Yeah, but I mean, those are the things you have to figure out.

Correct.

You know, it's just like, it's what works, you know. Um, yes, you know, how do you make things work together?

How do you make things work? So we went from living out of Manhattan, we, we were in Queens for a year, maybe, maybe two. Yeah. Um, and at that time we got our— we decided it was a brilliant idea, let's get a dog, let's get a puppy. Um, which by the way was probably, um kind of like how we had to figure things out a little bit more when we got that puppy Bud. Um, and I remember when we brought him home, we were both so excited, and then we realized the amount of work that—

yeah, especially, especially a puppy.

And especially a puppy, you know.

We got him from the North Shore Animal League, and he was this little furball in the corner with all these big dogs. Yeah, and something just stood out to us, and Remember when we brought him home in the Dodge Omni and he sat on— it was a hatchback, so he sat on the platform in the back getting the breeze.

Shove his little body up in there and he would fit perfectly until he got bigger and then he couldn't do it anymore. But I remember those, those were the things we did as newlyweds when you first, you know, you're first married and you're in your 20s. I was— we were 23. Yeah, I was 23. And you were 22, and then you turned— oh no, we were both 23.

We were both 23.

We were both 23 because then I turned 24. That was right. So there was that little thing. So each period, I think you learn, uh, something about each other. But I think you have to— like you said, we went into this knowing that we weren't interested in changing the other guy.

No, although you think some certain things might change. Along the way. You might think they will, but, but you can't expect that. No, you know, it's like you, you can grow together, um, and get to— and if you evolve, you're going to change over time no matter what. You're not going to necessarily stick in your ways, right, forever, or in those ways at that particular time. You're going to evolve as you, as you grow and get older. Um, so, but I hope—

I, I would also say to you, you have to know yourself And you have to be confident.

What do you mean by that?

I think you have to, you have to really know yourself and know what you will tolerate and what you won't tolerate, what you are willing to think about as far as growing or changing. But you have to really have— you have to feel confident about yourself, and you have to know that you're worthy. That you yourself are worthy. Um, because if the other guy doesn't, doesn't feel that way, I, I think that's where you can run into some, some differences. But I do think you have to know yourself. You have to have a sense of yourself. Yeah.

And I think you also have to— I think there's something about opposites attract. And, um, this is true. And being able to be a real solid unit together it's helpful that you all— you both bring different, different things to the table and different ways of looking at things. Because if you both are that strong-willed, headstrong person, let's go right now, you're going to be going in different directions. Yeah, not together necessarily, you know. It's so—

well, that's why I said you have to have some common goals together of what you want in your life.

I mean, we both wanted a family.

We both wanted a family. Yeah, that was a big unifying factor for the two of us is we both wanted a family. We both felt that was important. Um, how many, that was a different story. How many, that, that was, that was different. But through each phase of our relationship, through each phase of our life between first getting married, moving in together, building a home together.

Yeah, traveling a little bit, traveling a little bit, and where we're going to go and see, see each other's families.

Yeah.

And then getting the dog, getting the family pet.

Yeah.

And then, and then really kind of moving and settling into the city, you know, with, with the dog was interesting too, but it was also a great way to meet people.

You know, it was when you're walking. It was when you walk the dog. I don't think I walked Buddy as much in the city.

Oh, because he was my responsibility to walk. They've always been that responsibility for me, either, either puppy training them or walking them.

Walking them. Like, that is your— that was your—

with Ollie, I was the one that was up at 2 AM in the morning with him.

You're right. Even though I wanted him. Yeah. I remember. I, I know. Yeah, but those are good things that you were really good at.

I had the patience and the tolerance to deal with it.

I would have just said, oh, you'll clean up the mess later. Clean up the mess later.

And sorry if you hear the, the noise there, the neighbors doing something.

I don't know what the neighbor is doing.

I don't know either.

But, but so each, each phase always brought some challenges, um And I think it was just always, always having each other's back. That was also very, very important.

Yeah, no matter what, you needed to support the other person, good, bad, or indifferent, right?

You had to be able to say— now, you may have had a conversation off to the side later on to explain to somebody perhaps maybe why they should have done something a little differently.

You mean to like me? Yeah.

Well, like the two of us. So, okay, if we were in a situation in the public, it's important that we support each other.

Okay.

However, when we are away and the public isn't around and it's just you and me, you can then let me know.

Then I shouldn't have done that.

Then we can have a conversation or about that. But you always showed a united front, so it wasn't that anybody saw any discourse. If you had a discourse That's probably— you had to handle it.

That's probably more important when we had kids, even.

Well, it, it got emphasized more when we had kids, right? Um, I think we've always had that, mainly because our families were so dramatically different. Our family— our fa— how we were brought up was dramatically different. So there were things that we really, uh, came from two opposite sides of the coin. Really, truly two opposite sides of the coin. So when you say opposites attract, that's kind of like, you know, that's okay, what I, what I'm thinking. But unified at all times. You're home and you're in your room, or you're, you're in your, a place of safety amongst the two of you. You can have discussions about what had transpired, but it's a unified front. It's always a unified front.

So what would you say is the number one thing to get to know each other and why it's important?

Well, if you want to have a long-lasting relationship with someone, you have to communicate with them.

Okay.

You have to be open-minded to some extent. You got to be willing to try some things. And you also have to say no. When you really need to say no, you say no. You understand what your boundary is and you set it. And even though they're your partner, even though there's somebody that you love and you, you want to hang out, you still have a boundary. So as long as you know what those aspects are and you know what that boundary is, that's the whole part of continuing on.

Yeah, I mean, I would say the number one thing is communication, um, with it because if you aren't communicating and you're holding it in, it's going to come out. And when it comes out, it's not going to—

it's going to be bugly. Yeah, it's going to be ugly. You're going to have that ugly face on you.

It's not going to be that, or it's like— like, and that's something that I wasn't very good at, and I'm still not great. Like, you, you'll just come right out and get it out and get it over with, and that'll be done. I'll fester over certain things sometimes, especially if they're bugging me.

However, now I recognize when it's festering, and then I'll be annoyed and saying, you'll get the 11s.

Yeah, okay.

And I'll say to you, why— what is it that you're having such a hard time?

But in the beginning you didn't know.

In the beginning, I just like— I looked at you and said, I don't know, you know. Yeah, you know, my mother would always say to me, the quiet ones, you got to watch the quiet ones. And then I realized, yeah, because you can get stupid, but However, I will say to you that when those reactions did occur, it would not only set me back, but it also made me laugh because I'd be like, oh my God, that happened last week and now it's— now you're, you're decided to have a car. Like, I've moved on and you're still— you were still lingering with it. And I would just— I couldn't—

it was hard for me to take that seriously because I didn't understand That might be another episode of when I, when I let things out that I shouldn't have, or when I held them in too long and then let them out. I can remember a longer, longer burger basket that got hidden for a while.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

Your children, they couldn't keep a secret.

If there, if there was a choice as to who they would probably fear a little bit more than the other It would be their mom. Now granted, I was a stay-at-home mom, so obviously I have a little bit more control in the self-discipline area than, than you would. You would be that I come home at 7 o'clock, 2 hours later they're in bed, right? But for me, I was with them all day long, so there was a lot of disciplining going on in the early, early days. So children tended to know what my temperament was going to be like.

So they were surprised with mine.

They were. Hence why you, you threw them off for, for a loop, uh, when you flung the Longer Burger basket. I think is what you just said.

It was a napkin, napkin holder.

And some children weren't— were they not paying attention, or they weren't— they weren't listening to you?

You know something, I can't remember the incident that actually made me throw the basket.

All I know, I didn't—

it wasn't throwing at them, it was just throwing in anger on the floor.

Correct.

And, um, correct.

And it was funny because what— because somebody used to say to me, those baskets are very expensive. And I would say, yes, but I would buy one every couple of months. And, and so I knew they were expensive.

And for us, you know, the budget and the money, that'll be covered under the topic of things that do— that we do to fulfill ourselves.

No, finish the story. So you throw the basket, it it breaks.

Yeah, but it didn't fall apart.

It didn't fall apart.

It just had a nice crack on the one side.

Correct. And they're made out of wood, so you, you could, you could see the crack. Well, I don't know where it was.

No, there's a replacement.

That was a replacement.

I mean, you could, you can show them what that was.

So there was this— okay, so this is what it looked like, but this is the replacement. The other one I had would have colors in it. And so when he threw it, it just snapped the band. Um, and so I come home and everyone's really— but they're all looking at the basket and he had turned it so I didn't see it right away. And I think it was— I think it was the youngest.

No, it was Katie.

Was it Caitlin?

I'm pretty sure it was.

Yeah. Okay.

Which is surprising because I wanted to think Katie was the one that I, I, you know, who knows, as many years.

All I, all I know is that the children—

they raked me out.

The children said, Mom, Dad did it, and pointed to the basket and said, Dad did it.

Yep, just so they wouldn't get in trouble for Will Dunn's breaking it. That's what it was. They wanted to make sure that they were covered. So on that note, we should probably edit this, but we won't. Until next time, bye.