Chris & Jason

From Dodgeville
to Candorland

We grew up in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, and graduated from the same Gen-X high school class. We knew each other's names but not much else. Like most small-town kids, we spent a long time figuring ourselves out after leaving that community.

Many years later, we found each other on MySpace. We reconnected with brief messages, eventually moving to three-page emails filled with vulnerable truths and mix CDs of music that mattered.

We were both in transition, rebuilding our lives. We were unmistakably in love, probably by the time we had our first date. Life was complicated, but love made it all feel less confusing.

We got married and spent several years building a life without children, believing it wasn't in the stars for us. Jason embraced a love of performing as an improviser, actor, and morning-show DJ at a country radio station (the latter was less a choice than a necessity). At the same time, Chris began working for the UW, further building an impressive resume of finance positions.

The weekends meant a lot of concerts, backstage passes, plenty of beer, and a couple of international trips with well-known musical acts. We have stories. Some of them we'll probably tell on the show.

Just before our first child arrived, Jason lost his radio job and began building an independent voiceover business. Chris had worked in accounting, and when our second child arrived, Chris left her job at the University to join Jason in launching a parenting and lifestyle blog called By the Seat of Our Pants. We were good at it. We were even voted Best of Madison in our first year. But the constant grind of social media life, with its self-promotion and performative authenticity, wasn't for Chris. We stopped the blog, and Chris returned to independent work.

We moved from Madison to a nearby small town when our firstborn was four. We're still here. Our house sits in a quiet rural subdivision where you can hear the birds in the morning, where there's actual space between you and the next thing, where we've been slowly and intentionally building something that feels like community.

That's what Candorland is. It's what we've been practicing for a long time, and we're ready to share it with you.