100 Interviews

#5. MARY JO & BRYAN MACKINNON - “Someone who married their high school sweetheart.”

Bryan MacKinnon drove fourteen hours with a ring in his pocket.

His ex-wife, Mary Jo, had served him divorce papers four months earlier and though he’d signed them, he’d never really given up hope that she’d change her mind.

“Mary Jo was always in my heart,” Bryan says. “That’s just what my heart told me.”

It was a claddagh ring, an Irish symbol of loyalty. Bryan had one made for Mary Jo after she’d moved out of their Colorado home. She lived in Massachusetts now, but Mary Jo was in Las Vegas for a health care conference. Bryan asked if he could drive down and visit her.

“No matter what had happened with us, it was her ring,” he says. Determined, his hands tight on the steering wheel, Bryan knew he had to hand-deliver that ring to the woman to whom he felt it had always belonged.

Mary Jo and Bryan are ‘Price is Right’ contestant Jeff MacKinnon’s parents. In his interview, we’d talked briefly about how they were high school sweethearts who had divorced when Jeff was in college and then reunited after a short time apart.

Sitting across the table from them, it’s clear that Bryan is almost-innocently enamored of Mary Jo. Throughout our meal at Asia Grill in Mansfield, Massachusetts, his eyes never waver on giving her his whole attention. Bryan, like Jeff, is a smaller-built, but sturdy-looking guy with a huge smile that is seriously his whole face; it’s width shifts elegantly with his mood. As quickly as he’s making jokes about being “shackled” to Mary Jo for life, he’s also quietly serious, almost near tears, discussing their time apart. Mary Jo is an adorable woman with neat, shoulder length hair. She looks exactly like Jeff in the face, which is a little mind-blowing in the beginning. Mary Jo is the one who’d set up the meeting with me for March 9, their original wedding date. She felt it’d be romantic to do the interview on their 27th anniversary; they don’t count their divorce.

In 1981, Mary Jo was a senior and a cheerleader at Sharon High School. Bryan was a junior and a fullback on the football team. They met because their best friends were dating and Mary Jo’s friend suggested she date Bryan so the couples could spend time together. One day, in the library, as the girls walked past, Mary Jo’s friend pushed her onto Bryan’s lap. Soon after, they all attended a high school basketball game together.

“He romantically helped me off the bleachers,” she says. Bryan seems surprised. “I did?” Mary Jo nods. Then, they went for Chinese food and a movie. Mary Jo was the second girl Bryan had ever dated.

“We were sitting in his father’s blue truck talking and our friends pulled this tarp over the top to be funny,” she laughs. “Nothing happened. He’s a gentleman.”

Bryan smiles wide, “She turned me down.”

They tell me they started talking about marriage six months in. The conversation just felt natural to them both. Bryan write in his yearbook quote: “MJ, will you be my wife?”

“Did you know he was going to do that?” I ask.

“No,” Mary Jo says. “I had no idea. I was stunned.”

“You weren’t weirded out?”

“No. That was just our mentality,” she says. “We always thought like that.”

“Did you take it seriously?”

“I took it seriously but I didn’t answer it,” she says. “At that time, I didn’t know any better. I wanted to be a wife and a mother. Even when I was 16 years old, that’s what I thought I’d be. That’s what I aspired to be.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” I say and I’m surprised to find I mean it.

My family is hardly a paradigm for marriage. My grandmother’s on her third husband and my aunt is on her second. Even my father was married before my mother, who’s own mother and father were divorced. In fact, every person in my immediate family has been divorced except my mother. And she is a divorce attorney. We’re not very good at getting it right the first time.

Subsequently, I was never one of those little girls who dreamed of her wedding. My Barbies were always in the military or part of a makeshift polygamous household. I never played “wedding” or made a dress out of my mom’s white towels. I never longed for a tiara or a horse-drawn carriage. Getting married never even entered my personal zeitgeist. And still today, nothing about the idea or process of marriage appeals to me really. You spend a ton of money to announce to the world something that I’ve always felt to be a very private matter. And then everyone is supposed to come celebrate your love? It’s weird.

Why don’t we throw parties for ourselves when we accomplish our goals? Why is love some kind of public benchmark for success as a human? I watched the separated couples leave my mother’s office from my spot playing with army men on the linoleum floor and was terrified when they’d cry on her shoulder.

Mary Jo and Bryan didn’t get married right away — until they had a catalyst. In April of 1983, Mary Jo got pregnant with their first child, Taylor.

“I thought, ‘There’s no way I’m marrying you now.’” I didn’t want it to look like I was being coerced,” she laughs.

Bryan had meanwhile joined the military and was at Marines boot camp. The recruiter told him he and Mary Jo should be married because if anything were to happen to him in training, the life insurance would go to Bryan’s parents rather than to Mary Jo and his child. In response, the couple eloped.

“We stupidly did not tell anybody,” Mary Jo says. “Bryan told his friend and it somehow got back to our families. They were very mad.”

Bryan’s father, a devout Catholic, was especially upset. Mary Jo’s mother, who’d always promised her a big wedding, dropped the idea once she found out the couple was already married.

“Did your parents not like the other one?” I ask.

“My parents always liked you,” Mary Jo says when Bryan hesitates.

“They got married young too and I think they wanted us not to get tied down by somebody,” he says, speaking slowly.

“I tied him down,” Mary Jo jokes, gesturing to her husband.

“Well, at our age. In high school,” he further explains. “You know, my dad said don’t get tied down but when he saw Taylor….He was unhappy but he loved Taylor to death. She was the oldest grandchild.”

With only each other and their baby, Bryan and Mary Jo moved into an apartment in Mansfield. Bryan entered the military as a reservist and went to college during boot camp. He also worked for Norwood Electrical Contractors as an apprentice.

By 1987, some strain had entered their lives. Mary Jo was home all day with the kids on top of getting her early childhood education associates degree. Bryan worked during the day and Mary Jo had a part-time job at night. In 1992, the family moved from Massachusetts to Colorado because the economy had hit Bryan’s work in construction.

Mary Jo never felt at home in Colorado and Bryan’s work ethic was in overdrive. By now, Jeffrey’d been born and Bryan felt an innate responsibility to give his son and daughter a life with luxuries he never had. He wanted them to travel and to be able to attend whatever college they wanted. He took on 80 to 100 hour work weeks.

Mary Jo, too, was working on a biology degree, shoving four years of dual nurse/doctorate classes into a two-year program.

“What happened?” I ask.

Mary Jo shrugs. “Life,” she says simply. “We just took on way too much. He was working and always out of town. We had teenagers. It ate away at everything. I got sick and tired and frustrated.”

Mary Jo moved back to Mansfield to be with her family in 2006 and got a job as a nurse practitioner in nearby Taunton. She told Bryan she wanted him to move back with her but he didn’t want to leave Colorado. He’d always hated Massachusetts. Even though the plan to move out west was supposed to be temporary, the MacKinnon’s had stayed for fourteen years.

“It reached a point where I wanted to focus on my career and my kids were grown up,” Mary Jo says. “Neither one of us ever felt like we missed out on anything getting together so early but truthfully, I was at the end of my rope.”

Bryan’s been quiet during this discussion and I ask him what he thought when she moved out. He leans forward on his elbows on the table, his expression serious: “I never thought it was true.”

“You thought I’d come back,” Mary Jo suggests and he nods.

To cope, Bryan started another apprenticeship working on power lines and was always looking for more work. Keeping busy became a habit.

“If I wasn’t home then it wasn’t a thing that was really happening,” he says. “I’m not a very good idle person.”

Mary Jo frowns, rubbing his back, “You have better balance now,” she says.

While Bryan lived in denial, Mary Jo made all the moves to end the relationship. She was convinced it was over, especially after she officially filed for divorce.

I ask if either of them thought about dating when they were separated. Bryan says he never did because of horror stories he’d heard from friends about the modern dating world.

Mary Jo laughs, “You’re an old fashioned guy, for sure.”

Bryan cringes, “There’s so many social diseases and they’re so easily passed along. It scares me to death, to be honest.”

On the other hand, Mary Jo had joined online dating sites like eHarmony, but wasn’t having any luck.

“It depended on the day,” she says. “Sometimes I thought, ‘This could be fun to meet new people.’ But I ended up comparing their character to him.”

Bryan perks up, grinning, “Really?”

“Oh, All the time,” she says. “Guys with his exact characteristics kept coming up. One was actually a [power] line man. I was like, ‘Oh god.’”

“What changed?” I ask.

Bryan laughs, “She finally realized I was right,” he jokes. Mary Jo shoots him a cute look.

“After the divorce papers, it really sunk in for him,” she says. “He called me and said, ‘I don’t feel good. I think I’m depressed.’”

I’m stunned. I say, “You don’t call your ex-wife about that! You call your best friend or someone.”

Mary Jo nods, “That’s where it came from! We were best friends,” she smiles. “We were finally able to get raw and really talk.”

Shortly after, Bryan drove to Vegas and presented Mary Jo with the claddagh ring. Their divorce lasted officially for about four months. The couple was apart for 8 months total. But they didn’t tell anyone they’d reconciled for six months out of fear of public opinion.

“My brother would have been pissed,” Mary Jo says. “I didn’t want to tell Taylor and Jeffrey unless I was sure because they’d already been through so much. And I wasn’t sure if it was just unfinished business or if we were still in love. We didn’t want anyone’s opinion while we were rebuilding. It could just be us, without any noise.”

I can understand that. “It seems like you did it backwards,” I say. “You finally did the dating thing as adults.”

In the end, Bryan compromised, moving back to Massachusetts so Mary Jo could keep her job. He stayed with his older brother in Attleboro for a month so they could “date” normally. Everyone who found out was skeptical. Mary Jo’s brother was protective and the kids weren’t 100 percent on board.

But on Sept 25, 2010, the couple finally got the wedding they’d always wanted. There was a horse-drawn carriage and a bag pipe player at a mansion in Easton, Massachusetts. The whole family was back together, which Mary Jo wanted to make the focus of the wedding. It was important to her that people see it wasn’t just the couple getting back together, it was the entire family reuniting.

“Life’s not as complicated now,” Bryan says when I ask how their “second” marriage is different. “We both got our goals and dreams accomplished.”

Mary Jo agrees, “We’re a little older and a little wiser. I’m more patient,” she pauses. “We’re both more patient.”

“Is there anything you’d do differently?” I ask, expecting them to regret their divorce or maybe decide to get married the first time when they were a bit older.

Mary Jo shakes her head. “It played out exactly like it should have. The four of us create a perfect puzzle and it didn’t make sense not to be a foursome,” she says, placing her hand on Bryan’s arm. “It’s like a limb was missing.”

“I believed in my heart that Mary Jo was the one,” Bryan says, his voice confident. “It was just something my heart told me.”