Jeff Christensen works for one of those companies that just about nobody knows exists. In his case, it’s a company that takes building materials from the corporations that produce them, and prepares each item to go to the big retailers. Say you walk into a Home Depot in Texas to shop for a storage shed or a portable building, odds are what you’re looking at has been handled by Jeff and his colleagues.
That company is in Texas, where Jeff spent most of his life. After graduating from Texas A&M, he started out following his dad’s footsteps and went to work for an auto dealership, selling Chevrolets. (Asked if he was good at it, he shrugged and said, “I wasn’t the best.” But he smiled and added, “But I won a sales contest and got a week in the Bahamas.”) He then went to work for the old Southwestern Bell, left to open his own swimming pool business, then ended up in the distribution business.
And that brings us to the office romance, or more accurately, the cross-country inter-office romance…
Ann Foley was at work at a lumber company near Vancouver in British Columbia. Her job was to get the company’s products to distributors in the U.S. and Canada. One of those distributors was in Texas… and yes, the one where Jeff worked. So Ann was his customer and they’d gotten to know each other on the phone over the course of a couple of years before Jeff went to Vancouver on a business trip and they met in person for the first time.
Jeff says, “My wife had passed… leukemia… and Ann was divorced.” By then,
“We had so many phone calls that we got to the point where we weren’t just talking business anymore, we got to the point where we were comfortable talking about life.”
Eventually, Jeff invited Ann to visit him in Texas. She accepted and they discovered a shared passion for country-western music and dancing.
“Jeff & Ann at Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, Texas”
Jeff fell for Ann, and Ann fell for Jeff and for Texas, and the couple married in 2011 in Vegas. A few years later, they bought a vacation home at The Resort. (Ann’s brother and sister had been coming to The Resort for years.) Jeff decided to retire in 2016, and they agreed to sell their house in Texas and move in fulltime at The Resort.
But Jeff’s retirement didn’t take. His replacement didn’t work out and the company asked him to keep working on any terms he chose. So Jeff still spends several hours a day on the phone, keeping those storage sheds and other products going into the retailers.
That still leaves him time to enjoy time with Ann and to join in with activities of The Resort. Look for Jeff and Ann out on the dance floor.