Joy Ride

Mike and Amy Nappa found out what makes marriage fun

Annette LaPlaca

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Mike Nappa grew up without his dad around, so he never lived up close to a marriage. As a boy watching the adults around him, it seemed that couples were always bickering, always struggling. He wanted to get married—for the love, the companionship—but he was gearing himself up to grit his teeth and endure the hard stuff.

Then he married Amy and got the shock of his life. "The biggest surprise was that marriage is so much fun," he says now. "I'd rather be with Amy than with anybody else. I didn't expect marriage to be such a blast."

It's not that Amy is a paragon of perfection or that Mike is the most easygoing husband in the world. They're human—complete with pet peeves and personality quirks. And it's not that their nearly 13 years of marriage, most of them spent working together, have been pain-free. But by God's grace, the Nappas have uncovered a few secrets for creating fun and enjoying each other.

Talk about Impulsive

While Mike and Amy were students at Biola University in Southern California, Mike missed a day of class and needed to borrow somebody's notes. When he took the notes back to the girl he'd borrowed them from, her roommate, Amy, answered the door.

"I thought, 'Wow—who's this?'" Mike says.

"We'd already met a few weeks before in the school cafeteria," says Amy. "He just forgot."

"Sometimes second impressions are stronger," he insists.

They ran into each other occasionally because of mutual friends, and then school let out. Amy was sticking around for the summer semester before her senior year, and she got a job at Zale's Jewelers at a nearby mall. She hadn't counted on Mike being the assistant manager.

"It was part of my job to train every new employee," says Mike, as if he needed an excuse to pay attention to Amy.

"After a week, he asked me on a date," explains Amy. "Ten days later he asked me to marry him."

And she said yes? "He was serious about living for God. That attracted me," Amy explains. "For example, almost every guy I'd dated (even at a Christian college) only seemed to care about sex. So once we'd started dating, I kept waiting for Mike to try to get me alone. Finally one night he pulled me into the dark dorm kitchen. I thought 'Uh-oh!' But then he said, 'I want you to pray with me.' He was different from every other guy I'd known."

Of course, she thought he was "fun and creative and handsome" too. "But mainly," she insists, "I could see he was already living a godly, consistent life—the way I'd want a husband to live."

And how did Mike know Amy was right for him? "Oh, Amy is so easy to love," he says. "She had everything I wanted in a wife. It was a matter of choosing. I chose to love her, and after that my impatience kicked in. I thought, 'We love each other, let's just get on with the marriage."

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Originally published in: Marriage Partnership, 1999, Fall

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