Jammin'

Tough times forced Mary Beth and Steven Curtis Chapman to learn the art of improvisation

Joan Brasher

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At first glance, you'd think Steven Curtis Chapman was still a teenager—or at most a college student. But the popular recording artist, husband and father of three has accomplished more in 34 years than his boyish looks reveal.

Hundreds of thousands of fans have attended Chapman's sold-out concerts. He has sold millions of albums and won two dozen Gospel Music Association Dove Awards and three Grammy Awards. And the love song "I Will Be Here," which he wrote for his wife, Mary Beth, has become a mainstay in the wedding soloist's repertoire.

However, Chapman's life outside the limelight hasn't gone nearly as smoothly. In typically candid fashion, Steven will tell you that he and Mary Beth spent the first few years of their marriage making a number of painful discoveries about themselves.

Chapman, Meet Chapman

Their story begins back in the early 1980s at Anderson College in Anderson, Indiana. Since Steven and Mary Beth already shared the same last name, they were assigned the same mailbox. So it was only a matter of time before they met.

Actually, Mary Beth had already observed her mailbox mate without realizing it. In fact, she had enjoyed a good laugh at his expense.

"My roommate and I attended a freshman orientation event where a band was playing," she recalls. "The guitar player was wearing cowboy boots and had a green guitar! We couldn't stop giggling at this hillbilly."

A good laugh never hurt anybody, and Steven and Mary Beth became fast friends once they actually met each other. However, they never intended for it to evolve into a serious relationship.

"But every time I looked into the future," Steven says, "I saw us [together]." By the end of his junior year—and Mary Beth's freshman year—they were engaged.

Steven spent the summer traveling with a college singing group, and Mary Beth headed home to plan their wedding. Just prior to their fall 1984 wedding, Steven was hired as a staff songwriter with Benson Music in Nashville. So they came up with a plan: Steven would write songs and complete his degree at Belmont University while Mary Beth would work in the Benson office. With all their hopes and dreams ahead of them and $50 in their pocket, 21-year-old Steven and 19-year-old Mary Beth were ready to take on the world.

Pass the Hamburger Helper

"We drove away from our wedding in a green Pinto with a sign on it that said, 'Just married. Please don't hit us in the back!'" Steven says with a laugh. "We went to the Cincinnati Zoo for our honeymoon. We had just enough time to visit the zoo, spend the night and then drive back to Nashville."

"I had to get back to work," Mary Beth says, "and he had to go to school. All the way home from our honeymoon we cried."

"It wasn't regret," Steven explains. "It was more like the 'day after Christmas' feeling. So much emotion had gone into our wedding, and now we were driving back to reality—an apartment with two boxes of Hamburger Helper in the cupboard! In those first years, we learned a lot about trust and faith."

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Originally published in: Marriage Partnership, 1997, Spring

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