An East Coast guy. A Wyoming girl. Neighbors in a college town. A muscle car with a hot stereo. The beginning of our 52-year journey.
Nick and I grew up in a world where seat belts were optional. Where kids slept on the ledge under the back window of the moving car, and teenagers stood up in the back of pickups or sat on the tailgate for drives around town.
By the time we got married and started having our own kids, states were passing laws about wearing seat belts and infant car seats. So, we adapted, not realizing how important those laws would be to us in just a few short years.
It was 1988 and I was driving home from Grandma’s house with four kids and pregnant with our fifth when a semi and small sedan merged onto the freeway without seeming to see us, suddenly blocking both lanes. They were not up to highway speed and I was going fast. To avoid a collision, I turned hard and the station wagon spun a 360 and we came to rest on all four tires in the bar pit.
What had been a fun trip to Grandma’s had turned life-threatening in an instant.
Fortunately, that day—thanks to seatbelts—we were all secure and safe. After that experience I never drove anywhere without making sure everyone was buckled up. The kids never argued about buckling up either.
As our kids grew up, I wrote for newspapers and worked at a library; and Nick worked in education and later with a national synthetic oil manufacturer.
We took a break from traditional employment and served a 19-month mission for our church, where Nick was responsible for the maintenance and vehicle safety of over 100 missionary cars and trucks. “My job was to keep the missionaries alive,” says Nick. “And we did good.”
I managed missionary apartments. Every apartment got a fire alarm and a CO detector. That paid off our first month when a CO alarm went off at night in an apartment with four sleeping missionaries. First responders told us it saved their lives. (We keep one in our own home now, too.)
After the mission, instead of retiring, Nick returned to building an oil business and asked me to build our social media presence. That was the beginning of The Car Care Couple on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
I like to call us edu-fluencers. We’ve talked and taught about everything from tires to horsepower to windshield wipers. How regular maintenance is important for vehicles. If tires are bald, if wipers don’t work, if drivers are distracted or a myriad of other things go wrong, accidents can happen.
We emphasize safe driving and being prepared. And we love to get messages from our audience thanking us for our content and telling us they’ve learned something helpful.
When resqme invited us to partner with them in 2025, we learned how the resqme car escape tool can save lives. It was a no-brainer: we wanted everyone tohave a resqme.
We asked a friend who owns a salvage yard if we could break some car windows with a resqme to make a video. There we learned first-hand that it doesn’t take any special skills to use the resqme tool and saw how easy it is to use a resqme for quick escape from seat belts and vehicles with tempered glass windows.
It fit right in with our goals as The Car Care Couple.
Now we both carry a resqme on our keychains and we each have an extra in a handy place in our cars.
And those five kids from 1988? They’ve now multiplied to add 18 grandchildren. And each child or grandchild that drives has their own resqme.
After all, we’re not only The Car Care Couple, we’re The Car Care Mom & Dad and The Car Care Grandparents.
