PORT ANGELES — They’ve had some anniversary discussions, this couple.
Rick Brown was in the restaurant business, so just about every New Year’s Eve, he and his wife Patti couldn’t be together. Never mind that Dec. 31 is their wedding anniversary.
Rick has devoted a lot of years, holidays included, to fine food service, most recently at the Heron Beach Inn of Port Hadlock. So he’s spent many a New Year’s Eve, and Mother’s Day, for that matter, away from his wife.
So when Rick and Patti decided to move to Port Angeles to be closer to her family, they looked into a new line of work — and not long after she landed a job as receptionist at Wilder Auto Center, he joined the sales team there.
So now the couple, in addition to being married for 15 years, are co-workers at Wilder.
And as such, they are as “disgusting” as ever, friends and their kids would say.
“My parents are still really in love,” deadpanned the Browns’ daughter Kaiti, 15.
“They go on dates,” every other week, usually to Sabai Thai in Port Angeles.
Kaiti and her brother Ryan, 12, don’t get to go, and “that’s fine,” Kaiti said emphatically.
Ryan just rolls his eyes at his parents’ behavior, which typically involves holding hands and gazing at each other after the work day is over.
Met in 1992
The Browns met in 1992 when they were just 22, and have seen each other through slim times and abundant change.
They’ve lived on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Eugene and Portland, Ore., and Benicia, Calif., before settling on the Olympic Peninsula.
Now both are 40 and their admiration for each other is unchanged. They still look at each other as if they’re in a Disney movie.
“She is the bee’s knees,” Rick said of his wife. “I am the luckiest man alive.”
This past New Year’s Eve was the Browns’ 15th wedding anniversary, so they thought about going dancing at the Upstage in Port Townsend.
Patti, who grew up in Quilcene, remembers going there back when she was Patti DuPuis, and before she moved to St. Croix with $400 in her purse.
Instead, Rick took her to The Belmont for dinner, and then to the Morgan Hill Loft, a turreted hideaway above Port Townsend.
“It’s amazing; windows all around you,” Patti said.
The ring
Then Rick presented her with something she admits to fantasizing about for, oh, 15 years: a white gold ring set with three diamonds.
“Do you think this will fit?” he asked.
It did. Patti was fully taken by surprise by the gift, for which Rick had searched for and found at last at Fountain Square Jewelers in Port Angeles.
So this past weekend was ultraromantic, setting the stage for a sweet 16th year of matrimony. But in this couple’s case, it’s the day-in, day-out behaviors that provide ongoing nourishment.
After a tiff, for example, “Rick is always the first to say ‘I’m sorry,'” Patti said.
“I don’t have to be right all the time. I would rather lose the argument,” added Rick.
Essential kindness
The thing about him, his wife said, is his essential kindness.
“Rick is the nicest person I have ever known. He makes me want to be a better person.”
And the thing about Patti, says her friend Lisa Marie Warren, is that she always puts Rick first.
Warren and Patti have been friends for nearly 20 years, having worked together at a real estate company in Port Townsend in the early 1990s. Now when they get together, they have a good old time.
But when Rick walks into the room, Patti drops everything, Warren says. She gives her man her full attention.
“You think, ‘oh, come on, enough already,'” she joked. “They just look at each other. There’s something they have,” Warren added, “that you can’t put your finger on.”
It’s also inspirational to Warren, who’s been married 10 years herself.
“Patti has a lot of people coming at her all day,” at work and at home, Warren added. “She is really good at making him number one.”
Rick and Patti both came from small towns — he from Ukiah, Calif., she from Quilcene — and went on a lark to the Virgin Islands, where they worked hard at multiple jobs and played in the sun and surf.
Getting to know her
Patti had eyes for Rick soon after she met him; Rick admits now that it took him awhile to figure out she was interested.
But as he got to know Patti, he began to see that she was the kind of woman he wanted to go through life with.
A couple of years passed, and the pair moved to Eugene, having had enough of St. Croix’s hot confines. On New Year’s Eve 1994 they invited about 15 friends and family members to their wedding at Rick’s parents’ home in Cottage Grove, Ore. Their one-night honeymoon was at the Valley River Inn in Eugene, where Rick was working as the room-service captain.
He got that one evening off, fortunately, so Rick and his bride went out to a little night spot, Jo Federigo’s — and when Rick popped $5 into a video-poker machine, he won $75 and paid for the whole honeymoon.
The years since
In the years since, the Browns have had their struggles.
Rick said he wrestled with, and conquered, a gambling habit. Patti, ever his protector, steers the conversation away from that topic.
When pressed to think of something, anything, that’s not idyllic about marriage to Rick, she admits that he can be a bit loud at family get-togethers.
“His voice reaches an octave,” she said.
And what about Patti? Surely she does something annoying.
“I’m bossy,” she answers quickly.
Rick agreed, but added, “That’s her reaction to how I’m so boisterous, and talking over her for so many years.”
“See, he’s always ready to make me look good, said Patti.
Rick also praised his wife’s forbearance throughout the years when he worked long, late hours as a restaurant manager. Now, working at Wilder together is like a reward.
“I don’t think I want to not work together again,” Rick said.
When they’re off, the Browns like to stay home, read, watch movies, listen to music, and sit at the kitchen table.
“I just like being with her,” Rick said. There’s that Disney-esque, birds-singing thing again. Watching this pair, though, the idea of “happily ever after” doesn’t seem so out of reach.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
