CELEBRATE LOVE PROFILE #5 ROYCE AND RASHEEA HALL

 Imagine that it's Friday. Don't imagine that you got the day off tomorrow... just imagine that I actually posted this on Friday, the day I said I would instead of waiting til Monday. ENJOY! 

Royce stares across the room as he thinks. Like a stumped child during a spelling bee, he finds it impossible to answer my question but unwilling to give up. Finally he finds the only answer that makes sense,

 “Honestly, I don’t remember a part of my life without knowing her”.

Sincere and deeply honest, Royce has a hard time remembering what life was like before meeting his wife Rasheea. He’s not trying to be romantic or charming. He speaks with deep honesty as if I was asking him his birth date. He’s equally stunned when Rasheea recounts how they met through yahoo personals in 1999. Yes, It’s hard to believe but in 1999 people actually did use the Internet to date. Rasheea a recent college graduate living in Boston decided to give the Internet a try. Only 22 at the time, she wasn’t on any mission to find “the one” or dating with any agenda. She was simply looking to meet a few new people. At the time, Royce had recently moved to Boston. His job left him working nights and often alone, not giving him much of an opportunity to have a social life. He joined yahoo personals thinking this might be a chance to actually hang out with a couple people other then his old boring colleagues. 

When they met, getting along came easy. But as a young woman Rasheea wasn’t ready to throw all her eggs in one basket. She continued to date another guy but when Royce told her he was moving to San Francisco her world quickly shifted. Without any clear understanding, Rasheea found herself crying to a friend, devastated at the thought of Royce not being around. Following her heart instead of any dating advice book, Rasheea too was making San Francisco her new home a couple months later. She remembers, “There was no agenda, no motive. I just knew I wanted to be with him”. Her family members asked her repeatedly if she was ready for such a commitment but for her there was no commitment to be made. It was simple then as it is now, she just wanted to enjoy life near him. While in San Francisco, they didn’t live together and they both searched for the right career path. Each applied for grad school and moved back to the east coast together. Without even knowing, their lives were already effortlessly moving in sync.

Ironically, both being from Jersey, Royce and Rasheea are far from the same place. As Rasheea likes to illustrate “ My family is Good Times, while his are the Cosby Show”. Rasheea grew up in Newark with her grandmother in the projects while Royce grew up in the most traditional middle class home. While growing up in different settings, they grew up to value the same virtues: education, commitment, and family. As Royce strived to provide the same life his parents gave him, Rasheea learned to value what she was not given.

Like Steve Harvey preaches in “Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man”, as soon as Royce graduated from grad school and finally started to feel the career accomplishment he always wanted, getting married became a natural progression. As Rasheea recalls there wasn’t a drastic change or a needed push, they just moved into that direction when it made perfect sense for them.

Now 10 years from the day they met, Rasheea is pregnant and looking forward to having their first child. Already filled with motherly love, she find the most exciting part of being pregnant is knowing the life her future child will have.

 “I’m just over the moon that my child gets to have such an amazing father,” she says.

When I ask them what makes their relationship work, they agree it’s their ability to allow the other to be uniquely themselves. Royce speaks to the fact that they had to learn it’s okay to have different interests and not do everything together. He explains, “I’ve seen couples at events where one is sitting there miserable somewhere they don’t want to be only because they think they should be there, but no one ends up enjoying being there”. He speaks of moments where they go to events in separate cars so that one has the option to leave before the other. They laugh as they remember how Royce had to learn to not bring Rasheea along to watch a sport event if he wants to enjoy the game without having to worry about when they’re going to leave.

 As a married couple who has figured it out to an extent, Rasheea speaks on one

Misconception of marriage,

“Some people speak of marriage as two people who complete each other but in reality marriage is two whole people who come together to compliment each other”. 

She believes that Royce not only understands her but,

 “ He enhances me. He makes me want to do better”.

 Royce speaks to Rasheea’s thoughtfulness and her ability to love. He finds comfort in knowing she is always there for him,

 “She’s always there to defend my best interests”.

As we come to an end, I’m still amazed by how comfortable they are with each other. I ask her, as a professional black woman who has defeated statistics, is there any advice to give others?

“I think a woman in general finds her mate when she is suppose to. I believe in fate and some of us are meant to do it earlier in life and others later. I honestly got lucky with Royce. I really believe that I went through so much in my childhood that God put Royce in my life as a symbol of hope and to show what life could be”.