Amena Brown:
Y'all, it's been almost a year since my podcast joined Seneca Women Podcast Network and iHeart Media. And I want to celebrate with all of you, my listeners who have been joining me in the HER Living Room every week. I know we can't gather in person. I'm not even sure there's like a house that would be big enough to have a big enough living room for all of us, but I'm glad we have our podcast living room here, and I would love to hear from you. I'm working on an episode to celebrate my HER anniversary and I would love to include you in the episode.
Amena Brown:
Here's what you do. You go to speakpipe.com/herwithamenabrown and leave me a one minute voice message telling me your name and where you're from, if you feel comfortable sharing. And then, tell me your favorite episode of the podcast and why you loved it. Leave me a message by Friday, September 3rd and you could possibly be included on a future episode. But don't worry about writing all of this down. The link will be included in the show notes and the episode description as well. I can't wait to hear from you.
Amena Brown:
Y'all, welcome back to another episode of HER with Amena Brown. Also, a new thing is happening today, the first man to ever be involved in an episode. That's not quite true, actually. The first man to be on the mic because the man who's going to be in this episode is my husband, Matt, DJ OpDiggy Owen, who actually is always involved in every episode because he is the producer. But for this episode, he is coming from behind the producer area and he is on the mic with me. It's also interesting that September is a big month of anniversaries.
Matt:
It is.
Amena Brown:
First of all, it's my husband's birthday in September. The anniversary of this podcast launching under Seneca Women and iHeart Radio is in September. It is Pattern Beauty's anniversary in September, and it is our wedding anniversary in September. So I thought it would be cool to bring my husband from... What is it, in front of the mic behind the mic?
Matt:
I'm just happy to be here.
Amena Brown:
I thought it would be cool for y'all to not just hear my side of the story, because originally I was just going to do an episode telling y'all a little bit of our love story because this year we are celebrating 10 years married, which feels... I don't know, I think we both have had a lot of emotional moments since our ninth anniversary just thinking, it's coming up on 10 years. I mean, a decade feels like a big deal. So I'm going to share the questions that I would have discussed if I were here by myself. But since Matt is also here, y'all will get to hear his answers to these questions too. So I want to start first, babe, with what was happening in both of our lives before we met each other. So we met each other 2009. Give the people a short catch-up of what you can remember of what your life was like around the time that we were meeting each other.
Matt:
I mean, we both had our own foolishness and we just put our two foolishness together, and our foolishness is each other's foolishness now.
Amena Brown:
Well, give me a little more in like, how long had you been in Atlanta at the point that we were meeting in 2009?
Matt:
First of all, let me tell y'all that this is very much like our regular conversations, where my wife is asking me some questions. And I say a little something, and she's like, "I want some more details." That's what that question was just now. How far back do you want to go?
Amena Brown:
However far back you want to go? Will it help if I answer first?
Matt:
I mean, I'm not afraid of you leading, you know what I'm saying? I do realize I'm in the, HER Living Room, so I'm going to act accordingly. So I'll say that I grew up here in Atlanta in high school, south side of Forest Park. I had been in Texas for about 10 years. Some things went really good and a really bad thing had brought me back here. Life had gotten to a rough point. So it's like I had to hit the start over button. So I came back to Atlanta and was just rebuilding my life from the ground up, which also led to some depression. And just the things that you go through when you had something going on and all of that went away. And now you don't have anything going on, and you're like, was that the end? I was just really in a status of picking up the pieces whenever we met. I remember you came and did poetry at the church I was attending. And I was like, oh cool. I went and met you at the merch table.
Amena Brown:
You did.
Matt:
And the side of town that the church was on, not a lot of cool happening on our side of town. So I was like, "Somebody, please let me know something that's going on somewhere because I got to get where it's happening at." And so I asked you if you did more stuff like this around. And you said you did. You told me of a place where you was going to be doing some poetry at. And I was like, "Cool, I'm going to be there." I also remember meeting your grandma.
Amena Brown:
My grandma was there.
Matt:
And the wild thing is there was somebody that I've known that was a part of the church that I've known since I was in high school. And that lady looked at me and said, "You should date that lady." And I remember just in the moment just being like, "Ain't no way that lady is interested in this dude right here." Life had dealt me some blows and I was just picking up the pieces. And I was like, "Man, I'm in scrub mode right now." So I didn't think it was a thing. So I'm like, "Cool, let me just go enjoy the art, make some friends."
Amena Brown:
I will say what's interesting to me and thinking about like the places we were in our life before we met each other is we both were in a situation of feeling like we were having to pick up the pieces of life. So by the time 2009 came in, and I was just talking to a friend about this because we were talking about the amount of like food that you eat when you first fall in love with someone. I was talking through with her, this exact part of our story. And so for me, I feel like my pick up the pieces was that I had started out my career full time after working in corporate for so long. And then as many of you know that have been listening to this podcast, you've heard me like make reference to this story as well, but that did not go well the first year and a half.
Amena Brown:
So by the time Matt and I are meeting each other, I'm renting a room from a friend, a room and a bathroom from a friend inside her house. I was working a customer service job at night for a while to try and get out of the debt that I ended up in from quitting corporate. So we both were in this place where our lives had not gone the way we planned and the way we wanted. And we both were in the process of rebuilding, right?
Amena Brown:
So we meet at this church. This was 2009 so MySpace was the main way, the main social media you used to communicate with someone. So when Matt was like, "Do you do other things like this in town?" I was like, "Yeah." And I always post my events on my MySpace. So he and I became MySpace friends. And then I think the next event in town I did was at the Starbucks in Conyers, Georgia. And y'all, I remember having the conversation. I remember having the conversation with you at the church that day, but I didn't feel any special feelings that day. I was just talking to you like I would talk to anybody at the table. But when we went to that Starbucks, my sister was with me, and you walked in and it just stole all the breath out my chest because you looked so good. I mean, you had like a [inaudible 00:08:14] to match your shirt that you had on. And I think you played sax because... Did you play saxophone that day or did you just stay? No, maybe you didn't.
Matt:
I think I just showed up, yeah.
Amena Brown:
But you showed up looking very nice. And also I want y'all to know that he was kind of stunting on me. So he showed up and he was like, "Yeah. No, like it's cool to be here. I can't stay long. I got another event I've got to go to." I was like, "Oh, okay. We busy. Okay. We busy. Oh."
Matt:
I was a little shifty in my younger years.
Amena Brown:
Pretty much right at that Starbucks meeting, at any time I would've gone on a date with him. If he would ask me out that day, I would have said yes. And there were subsequent. We had over the years where I was like, I would totally go out to dinner with him. And I just don't think he knows that I would go out to dinner with him.
Matt:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
So that's sort of put us in a friend zone, even though I wanted to be more than your friend.
Matt:
And I was working so hard to protect my just friend, Amena
Amena Brown:
So as I got to know Matt and found out like, oh, he can play saxophone, he DJs. And I also knew the side of town where you lived and I knew that there wasn't as much stuff to do over there. So whenever my friends would have a show or if my friends were looking for a DJ, I would tell them about Matt. And then that's sort of how we ended up developing this friendship and sort of being in the same kind of friendship circle. But that lasted us for two whole years, y'all, honestly. We spent two years of me kind of having a low key crush on him that whole entire time I was super duper attracted to him.
Matt:
Impossible. No way.
Amena Brown:
Super duper wanted to go to that dinner. I wanted us to have dinner where we could sit across from each other. And even when we did go out to eat, we had a couple of times we went out to eat just one-on-one, and he would be looking so good. Sometimes it would feel like we were in this romantic environment, but it was just homie energy.
Matt:
I mean, don't get it twisted. I mean, you was attractive from the jump, man. That's not a problem. It was just that I thought this woman was not going to be interested in this man. Impossible. I thought there was no way possible shooting out of your league. Bro, sit down.
Amena Brown:
So in our friendship, we were ending up spending more and more and more time together. In part, because I had an idea at the time as many of during this era, I was performing in mostly Christian conferences, churches, Christian spaces, mostly white. And I had kind of been pigeonholed into only doing poems one at a time. And I would get booked for these events. Sometimes it'd be like a nine session conference, but I was there all three days doing three minute poems in every session. But I had to be there for so long and I was getting paid so little.
Amena Brown:
And so a shout out to Susan Isaacs, who is a wonderful comedian and author. She and I ended up at the same event. And she told me, "You need to put what you're doing into a set of material." And the only way I could think that people would book it like that is if it had music. And since I knew that Matt was a great DJ, I asked him if he would go into "redacted" nonprofit that used to have a space where you could go there and you could pay a membership fee. In a way, it was kind of like a coworking space, but for creatives very specifically. So it had a studio in it. It had these like iMac computers and it if you were into graphic design, and so I pay the yearly, so Matt and I could go in there and build this show together.
Amena Brown:
So we started building the show probably starting at some point in 2010. And we spent about four or five months before we got the show in this good place. But imagine that every Friday or every other Friday for a few months, we were spending three to four sweaty hours together. And not the fun kind of sweaty either because the place where we recorded, the studio, not very much different from where we're recording now.
Matt:
I will say it's hot in here right now.
Amena Brown:
The studio where we were meeting, it was hot, y'all. But we would go in there, do our little work. And a part of my creative process is I need to get my little stuff out of my heart before I can start working. And so I would blow into the room every Friday and be telling him all these stories and stuff, what happened to me. Sometimes I would walk in and tell him about these dates I'd been on, and then it would come out because I felt so comfortable talking to him. And he would always say, "This is a safe space. Share whatever you want to share."
Matt:
Again, protecting my just friend, Amena.
Amena Brown:
But I would start talking about somebody I was dating, and I would immediately want to take the words back because I was like, "I really like him. And I don't want him to think that I'm talking to him about other people I date because I don't want to date him. I would much rather be dating him than most of these people." So we are having these moments in said studio place.
Matt:
Redacted Redacted.
Amena Brown:
Redacted Redacted, and get to a point where we're now finding excuses to see each other. Because now the show is finished, we don't need to really be in there, and end up kicking it one night after we went to a very bad concert, Redacted Artists.
Matt:
It's wild that a concert that didn't go so good is how we started because we've been to so many great concerts over the years. You blowing into that room and just letting out all your feelings and emotions, that was a sign of things to come but that bad concert, luckily enough, was not a sign of things that come because we've been to some great concerts together.
Amena Brown:
Amazing concerts, actually. That was a very small percentage of bad shows that we've ever been to. Okay. So I should explain that by this time we are summer of 2010, and a friend of mine had told me I should come to this Redacted concert because they thought it would be good mingling for me. And I knew that one of the artists performing there was an artist that Matt had told me about when we were building the show together. So I was like, "You should come to this show and I'll meet you over there." Well, he didn't know that I was a part of a dating program at the time, which I believe I have talked about on this podcast. But if I haven't, I was dating based on a program in a book called How to Get a Date Worth Keeping by Dr. Henry Cloud. And Dr. Henry Cloud, I know you're listening to this podcast.
Matt:
Got to be.
Amena Brown:
And I realized that now you're in a leadership mode where that's mostly what you spend your time talking about, but I just want to give a special shout out to that book you wrote, because it was very helpful to me. And it did, in a way, in a roundabout way, it did lead me to the man I was going to marry. So at the time I was on this dating program, and a part of the program was you had to meet five people that you potentially could date in a week's time. So right before I told Matt I was going to meet him at this concert, I went to a meeting of the Tall People's Club. And this is a real thing. There's an International Tall People's Club. And I found it on meetup.com. I'm not telling y'all a lie. I went with one of my girlfriends, who I was in small group with. Man, I need to reach out to her on Facebook and be like, "Girl, I really owe you some money."
Amena Brown:
But anyways, I think the women had to be above 5' 9" in order to get in. And then the men had to be over six feet in order to qualify for the Tall People's Club. So we went and y'all, you remember how when you were in elementary school, you always had at least one teacher that had vests or ties that matched the season, like had jack-o-lanterns, had candy canes, stuff like that had four leaf clovers or whatever.
Matt:
Had that Rudolph nose hanging off the sweater.
Amena Brown:
Okay, these are the people that were at the Tall People's Club. It was not Idris Elba. It was not George Clooney. It was not anyone sexy that I could think of. It was all of my former teachers, now in their fifties and sixties, that were waiting there for us. So I'm leaving that, and my friend is looking at me like, "You should go to this concert with this guy because you like him. I hope he likes you. Anything can be better than what we've encountered here today. This is terrible."
Amena Brown:
So we go to the show, the show's bad. We're leaving the show and go out to the parking lot. And I say to Matt, "I just got back from LA." I don't say to him that I was in LA thinking about you. But I just say, "I got back from LA. We should talk again about the show we build because I have some thoughts about what I want to change about it." You said, "Man, we should just do it tonight. We should go eat." And I was like, "Okay," because this was like the second time that we'd been out to eat together and like nothing of a boo nature, nothing of a romantic nature had happened. So we went to this wonderful empanada place that's closed now, sad face. Had a wonderful conversation there, but I feel like I entered that moment. I need to find out, does this man like me or not? Does he even see himself dating people or not?
Matt:
I entered this moment like, I'm about to eat some empanadas and hang with my homie. We can go laugh a little bit and go about our merry way.
Amena Brown:
So I asked him at the table if you all of your ducks were in a row, because that was a phrase Matt would always say during this time of our friendship.
Matt:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Amena Brown:
He would always be like, "I'm not dating anybody until I get my ducks in a row. When I get my ducks in a row... " And I was like, man, how many ducks are there? Are they adult ducks? Are they child ducks?
Matt:
I didn't want to be hollering from the passenger side of my best friend's ride.
Amena Brown:
Is it a school of ducks? I was like, and can't we still go to dinner? Are the ducks preventing us from just going to dinner? I was very confused about the ducks. So I was like, "If you had all your ducks in a row, would you date?" And do you remember what you said?
Matt:
I was definitely afraid and that some of those fears were healthy fears because I wanted to be able to step up to the plate. I wanted to be a whole me coming into a relationship. I didn't want to be a part me and somebody had to drag the other half that I couldn't make up. I want to meet someone. I wanted to add some to somebody's life and not take away. And so I think those were some healthy fears. But I knew I had some unhealthy fears because some of the history behind that, those that don't know me, I was married once before and the marriage ended horribly, led to some rough years, which led to me being back in the Atlanta area picking up the pieces. In that conversation, thinking about these fears, I realized I had some unhealthy fears also that was like, okay, that thing happened. But that thing doesn't mark your life. You don't have to stay stuck in that life.
Matt:
By this point I had taken some years and years. I'd been through therapy and had people in my life that was helping me walk through some things. And so if I wasn't at that time then, I knew I was coming soon to where it's like, okay, it's time for you to get up and move on because some of these fears are just unhealthy.
Amena Brown:
And that helped me to be like, okay, I can ask question number two, because your answer gave me a little... I don't know if it gave me hope is the right word, but it gave me a little more courage after you were so honest with me. Then I was like, okay, boom, I can get my second question answered, which that will tell me, is this only a friendship or not?
Amena Brown:
Because the show we built, which was based on my first book, Breaking Old Rhythms, the show we built I felt had the potential to be a success, had the potential for us to be able to travel together. And I was like, we can't be traveling together and doing creative work together without me at least addressing the fact that I totally have feelings for him. So I felt like I should at least find out is he just closed off to dating in general? Is he closed off to dating me? What are the vibes? So once the question was answered, yes, if my ducks were in a row, sure, I would date. Then I was like, boom. Okay, second question. I asked you, do you have hope that God has somebody for you? And when I asked that question, y'all, it was stone quiet at the table.
Amena Brown:
And it was quiet for a long time. It was quiet for so long that it was awkward. And I was just sitting there hating the awkwardness, but also like, he's going to answer my questions. So we're just going to sit here. Do you remember being quiet that long?
Matt:
In part, I remember being like, man, I can't believe my just friend Amena getting all up in my business like this. Now that I've known you after what's about to be 10 years of marriage, it makes perfect sense as to who you are. But at that point I was like, man, my just friend who I keep talking about just wants to be my friend, that girl's not interested in me, sure is throwing some heavy questions, man, at this table. I think my answer was the honest part. But my answer also was kind of what hit me. I was having to deal with the feelings or whatever that brought up versus, again, me trying to protect my friend, Amena.
Matt:
My answer to you was that actually somebody like you gives me hope. That thought was the first thought in my mind and that like felt really strange, but it was the overwhelming thought in my mind. And again, how do I protect my just friend, Amena? I'm trying to be a safe dude friend to you. And also after what I just gone through, can I be in a relationship, you know what I'm saying, after some of the things that were said to me. Am I those things that were said to me? If so, I don't have any business being in a relationship with nobody. That place that I was at in my life, is that a good place for me to try to step up and be somebody's somebody in they life when I'm like, I don't even know if I can stand on my own two. So there was a lot of processing that happened in that moment.
Amena Brown:
So somehow y'all, we ate that food, checks got paid, and left. I don't remember to this day how all of that wrapped up. The next thing I remember is I was in the car going over the conversation we had and I was starting to feel bad that I had gotten in your business without telling you anything of my answers to the same questions. And that felt kind of like it wasn't fair to me to be asking you those things and then be like, "Well, empanadas were delicious. Goodnight. Hope you have a great one," whatever. And so I was driving home and decided to call you on the phone to be like, "Yo, I feel like I asked you all these questions. You put yourself out there to me and I'm not putting myself out there equally."
Amena Brown:
And so we kind of ended up having this conversation about... I think you had asked me why I was still single. And so I told Matt straight up that the reason why I'm single is because I don't put out. And I was like, "I'm pretty sure if I put out, I'd have a boyfriend right now. But because I don't put out, I don't have boyfriends. So that's that on that." And so we had a little laugh because it was kind of... I mean, it was true what I said in the sense of me not putting out, but we had a little laugh that that was the reason why I was still single. And so then we started talking more about that. And I think you asked me, "Well, if you were to date somebody, what would he be like?"
Amena Brown:
And I started describing all these things and then feeling so silly because they were all you. They were all things that describe you. I was like, "I can't believe he's not hearing this going like, 'Hey, that sounds a lot like me.'" And so I was like, "This is dumb." So by this time I had gotten home. And I was like, "Look, I just need to say something. Okay. We've been friends for a while."
Matt:
This is where I caught on to what we were really talking about. I was clueless. I was talking to my home girl, Amena, until this moment.
Amena Brown:
Okay. And I must have said like a few of those phrases because I was trying to get my own courage up...
Matt:
You were circling the runway.
Amena Brown:
... to just say to him like, "I like you. I would love to be more than friends with you." So it was a lot of like, this probably going to be awkward, but we're both adults, and we can take it and we can talk about it. It was a lot of that before you interrupted me.
Matt:
I remember I kind of had to do the math real quick in my brain once I was like, "Oh, this is what we're talking about. Can I do this? Can I? Should I? I'd be like, "Man, you would be dumb if you didn't at least try this thing out." I just thought you were such an incredible person. I was like, "First of all, Again, there's no way this woman should have been interested in this dude." No way. In my mind, made zero sense. But I was like, "If we here, I would be foolish not to step up to the plate." So I was like, "Hey, let me see if I can help out here." And I just told you that I really admired you. And think it was on several levels.
Amena Brown:
You said you found me attractive.
Matt:
Oh.
Amena Brown:
On several levels.
Matt:
Do, still do. That wasn't just the moment, y'all.
Amena Brown:
And I think you asked me if I have hope tonight. And you said, "I have hope because of you."
Matt:
That's right. Okay. See I got the order...
Amena Brown:
y'all, it's been 10 years. I realize some of the order of the story, we might've mixed it up, but all the facts are true.
Matt:
Let's be honest, she invited me in for this conversation knowing good and well I was going to mess up the details.
Amena Brown:
But there are some points of the story now that I'm like, "Oh no, it didn't happen that way," the order of it. I remember now that my initial question to you was about the ducks.
Matt:
Oh, yeah.
Amena Brown:
Would you date or not? And you just said, "Yeah, I would." And then my second question was, do you have hope God has somebody for you? And that's where it was silent. And that's where you talked about the fears, the unhealthy fears. But y'all, it's been 10 years. The facts be swirling around.
Matt:
And we still together.
Amena Brown:
So anyways, basically from that phone conversation, it becomes clear to you that I have feelings for you. It becomes clear to you that you're like, "I would like to enter this relationship."
Matt:
Absolutely.
Amena Brown:
I was dating a lot of scallywags casually. So I said to him, "So you want to date just me though? Just me though." Because knowing that Matt had come through a divorce, he had taken this break from a lot of things in his life while he was healing up from his divorce. So to me, it actually would have made sense if you would have said to me then, "I really want to see what's going to happen with us. I haven't been dating. I would like to also date some other people." So I was leaving you the room, but I was also trying to get some clarity because I was dating some scallywags that were totally dating other people.
Matt:
I mean in some ways I want to thank them fellows. You know what I'm saying? If they would have acted acted right, I might not be here. So thanks partner. I remember when you asked me that question. I don't know. It seemed crazy to me because it's like, okay, in my mind, you're a 10 in all regards. You know what I'm saying? What I'm going to do, be out here with somebody else being like, "I mean, she ain't cool like Amena." If I'm riding with a 10, it's not a question of if there's other 10s out there. It's like, I'm rocking with my 10 right here. You know what I'm saying? So let's see what it is and give this thing a real good shot. And plus, by this point, I was like 32, 33, maybe.
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Matt:
I'd already gone through that phase where I was the scallywag. I was hard to nail down at a certain period of my life. By this point, I was already picking up a lot of messes I've made in my life. So I didn't want to make no more. You know what I'm saying? I wanted to try to give this thing the best run we could.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. So we talked on the phone until like four in the morning. It was time to go to bed, for you only a few hours away from having to take the youth group to Six Flags. I think about that all the time.
Matt:
Yeah. I was hanging out with a bunch of middle schoolers the next day at a youth group at a church that I was at, a trip to Six Flags. And it felt so crazy because I'll be on a long ride or a rollercoaster with some middle schooler. I couldn't be like, "Let me get some advice. I got this thing heavy on my mind. What y'all think?"
Amena Brown:
Oh, I got a girlfriend now. You got a girlfriend? And I'm like calling my girlfriends. And I'm like, "Do y'all know if there's an orientation for dating a good man, because I don't really know what you do when you date a good man exactly. What are the rules? What are the vibes?" So we started dating August of 2010, and I feel like that was a combination of us just finding various sundry excuses to see each other and hang out...
Matt:
Absolutely. It was ridiculous.
Amena Brown:
... and eat food together, and ate food after we ate the food together.
Matt:
Dropping off donuts at your house before I had to be at a meeting that was an hour away. I was late to every meeting.
Amena Brown:
And then I feel like pretty early on, we at least felt like this is getting serious to us. And so we did go on kind of like the meeting the family tour. I would say you had met already a lot of my friends, so we really weren't having to have that meeting. But we felt like this is serious enough that we might decide to get married. And if we do, we want to go ahead and get to our families knowing each other. So we did that. Do you remember a moment in our dating where you were like, I'm going to marry her?
Matt:
I remember the I love you thing started hitting me between the eyes a little too soon. I was like, "Nah, partner. We're not saying that just yet. We're going to be exclusive. We're going to do this thing right. But no, hit them brakes real quick." Again, just feeling like after what I had experienced, it was like, there's no need to rush this thing. I feel like you should date somebody at least 365 days, make sure there's not one day out of a year that they just worship Satan that one day. I feel like you just be around somebody all the way around the calendar. Meeting the family was the right next step. But I do remember that I love you thing. Like, I really want to say it. And I was like, "But you should not say it." By the time we just went ahead and popped off with it, I was like, "Okay, this thing is just moving fast because it's supposed to."
Amena Brown:
I think the moment for me, which is interesting because it's also connected to us meeting our families, your grandmother had a birthday. She was in her nineties and I went out of town with you and your parents to her birthday. And that was my first time being around any extended family of yours and seeing the other men in your family and how family oriented they were. And then me looking at you and thinking about what I knew of you and your character from having been your friend and now dating each other. I think that was my moment of like, I could see us be in a family, the two of us. And I think that trip was my like, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure I want to marry him, and I feel like he wants to marry me too."
Matt:
Yeah. That's a big deal when you take somebody to your Mamaw's house. I'm Southern, so that was my Mamaw.
Amena Brown:
I'm going to say, after watching 90 Day Fiance, I've been watching Family or Fiance, that's a show on OWN. And I watch it all the time, and a lot of it is couples that get engaged and sometimes their families don't even know that they got engaged or they went ahead and got engaged even though their families don't really think the relationship's good. And so it makes me so glad that we went on that family tour so that we could really meet each other's people and see what the vibes were. And it also gave our families, more in particular, our parents and some of our siblings, the opportunity to get to know us versus... We'd fallen in love with each other, so when we sprang that on the family, they're just now meeting this person. It gave our families time to get to know our person and understand why we were falling in love with each other too.
Matt:
We grow in a relationship together, that also gives our family time to grow into this relationship with us.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. Okay, so we started dating in August of 2010. You proposed to me on my birthday in 2011, in May. And then y'all, originally, we were going to get married in February of 2012, originally. I, for some reason had in my mind, maybe we could do a Valentine's wedding. And then I was like, "No, maybe we could do like a new year's wedding." And then I was like, "Nah." And then I was like, "I would love to have a beach wedding, but you need to do that at kind of like the off season."
Amena Brown:
So I was like, "Maybe an October beach wedding." And because Matt was a youth pastor at the time at the same church where we met, he became the youth pastor there. So by the time we were dating and about to get married, he was still the youth pastor there. And my youth pastor when I was growing up, got married when I was 15. So I got to be at the registration, guests book thing and wearing their wedding colors. And it really meant a lot to me to be in his wedding. And so I started thinking to myself, maybe we don't want to have a destination wedding because that will mean probably a lot of the students won't be able to be there. And maybe some of our family members wouldn't be able to be there. And so we decided to get married at the church.
Amena Brown:
So the same church where we met is where we also planned our wedding, planned our wedding for a Friday night. I want y'all to know that our anniversary is September 9th, 2011. I wanted our anniversary to be 9/10/11, but somebody else had already booked the church that Saturday.
Matt:
I can't believe that I didn't think of the fact that we was getting married on 9/09, which is one of my favorite drum machines. It came right after the world famous Roland 808. But the Roland 909 is an amazing drum machine. You may not have allowed it or been down for it. But man, that would've been so dope to include it coming down to out to like a...
Amena Brown:
Because I was going to ask you, what do you think you would have done thematically? If you could do the wedding all over and you could do a 909 as a part of the theme, what would you have done? Would you have wanted the cake to be like...
Matt:
Maybe if while we're doing our vows, because the 909 is like a step sequencer, right? You've got 16 steps. And as we're both adding steps or like, you be like the kick drum, like... Now I come back and I add the clap...
Amena Brown:
There would have been a 909 on stage is what you're saying.
Matt:
Yeah, yeah.
Amena Brown:
And we would have done that. Okay.
Matt:
Me, you 909, right in the middle. Nah, ring ceremony. You know that salt ceremony people be doing, and you can never take the salt out and mixed them. We done mixed up the hi-hats with the kick drums and snares and made a beat of it.
Amena Brown:
Y'all, it worked out for the best that he did not think of that 909 situation. So we got married on a Friday, and because the church was kind of far out from the city, I knew that getting married on a Friday would mean that only people who really loved us would brave Atlanta traffic to drive outside of the city to that wedding. What was your favorite moment from our wedding?
Matt:
Oh, it has to be when you first entered the room. Dear, God. I mean, people all day was coming up to me like, "Aw man, you in trouble. We saw... oh man." And so in my mind, I was psyching myself up like, "You got it. Don't pass out. Don't pass out." I just remember that moment you walked in the room and I was like, "Wow." Yeah, exclusive. Yeah, that thing I said? Yeah, exclusive.
Amena Brown:
Exclusive.
Matt:
A world premier. You walked in that door, I'll never forget when they presented us, me and you, hand-in-hand, walking out and just feeling like the world just began. Today is day one. It was just such an electric atmosphere and just being like, yo, me and her, here we go.
Amena Brown:
Oh yes. That was such a wonderful moment. Y'all, I'm not going to lie about it. I'm sure we're going to post pictures of this, but in my wedding dress, I definitely just feel like it was a lot of boobie. I remember there was just breast coming out of the top of that dress. And even when I look back on our wedding video, I'm just like, "Wow, guys. You really went for it, Amena. You really went for it. Just let the ta-tas just sit up and out there." But I was like, "I'm getting married."
Matt:
That was God-given. You know what I mean?
Amena Brown:
I had to let it ride. I will say, as a side note, before I say my favorite moment of our wedding, I remember that day I took a nap. And it's always a glorious sign to me that I'm having a wonderful day, that a wonderful thing is happening to me if I'm able to take a nap in the middle of the day. And that's how at peace I felt on our wedding day. I wasn't a big wedding planner girl. I just wasn't really into that. I was into marrying him more than I was all the particulars to go with the wedding. But the fact that I took a nap in the middle of that day said to me, I really had nothing on my mind that I felt I needed to worry about. There was nothing about that decision that I was wringing my hands over.
Amena Brown:
I had really said yes to marrying you, even before you proposed to me. So to me, that moment was like, now it's a formality to say something I've already said in my heart and you've already said in your heart. But my favorite moment of our wedding was our wedding dance. And our song was Unforgettable, the version where Natalie Cole did the duet with her dad. But it was like technology-wise, she went back because she was not able to sing it with him in that way before he died. But some of y'all old heads listening will remember that music video. And it's like, she's there and this old footage of Nat king Cole in black and white. And I just always loved that song and loved that version in particular. But I loved the words to it.
Amena Brown:
And of course, I'm also a big watcher of Married at First Sight. And of course, these are strangers at their weddings. And sometimes this happens even when it's not a stranger getting married, but I'm sure some of you have been to weddings where the people do their dance, but they kind of rush it off so they can hurry up and like get finished. And that moment was the first time that I felt like that moment was just for us. Like, who cares if it's awkward for the people who have nothing to do, but watch us dance with each other.
Matt:
Just got lost.
Amena Brown:
Like, who cares? But I loved laughing and joking with you and just soaking in that moment. That was my favorite moment, hands down.
Matt:
Yeah, beautiful moment.
Amena Brown:
So now here we are, babe. It's 10 years for us. I still are just like... I mean, for all the things we made it through and achieved and survived, the 10 years seems right. But then sometimes it just seems like, 10 years? It just doesn't seem like it's been that exact amount of time.
Matt:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
So what would you say it's like now being married 10 years later? Now that you think about us on that wedding day, what are your vibes now that you're like, "Wow, we've been married 10 years." What do you think?
Matt:
I still feel like I'm wanting to protect my friend, Amena, sometimes. Like, "Hey man, get it right. Your friend Amena watching." I feel like my goal is still the same. I want to add to your life and not take away. But I also will say that I've learned a part of being together with somebody is sometimes they've got to be able to give to you too. So I mean, sometimes you will take. Sometimes may not measure up. Sometimes I may miss it or sometimes I may be insufficient, and that's okay too. You know what I'm saying?
Matt:
That doesn't make me a scrub. It doesn't mean that this woman should not be with this man, like I thought originally. It's a beautiful thing to find yourself in a place where you can let your guard down and make mistakes, do something foolish. I'm not talking about malicious or evil or something, but just live life and be a person. I feel like I've learned things about you that I did not know 10 years ago. There's some shockers, man. You keep bringing up these reality TV shows. I never in a million years would have guessed that Amena, oh, she's really into that. Okay, cool, cool, cool.
Amena Brown:
I do. It's very enjoyable.
Matt:
I also, I mean, I learned this while we were dating, I realized that I like raps more than you do.
Amena Brown:
It's true. It's true.
Matt:
Because we were riding in the car, it was one of the things I learned early on. You were like, "Hey, we listening to hip hop all the time. Can we listen to something else?" But I feel like that's the thing is like I was trying to rebuild and repair and sometimes you just need somebody that really loves you that just lets you just be.
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Matt:
And I appreciate that.
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Matt:
I appreciate that about you. My friend, Amena.
Amena Brown:
I think the thing that when people ask me like, "Yo, y'all about to celebrate 10 years. How does it feel?" The first thing that comes to my mind is even after all this time, I still really, really like you.
Matt:
Oh, no doubt. I really like you.
Amena Brown:
Really, really like you. You're the first person I want to talk to when I get up in the morning.
Matt:
I can't wait for you to wake up.
Amena Brown:
You're the last person I want to talk to before I go to bed. If something bad happens, you're the first person I want to call. If something good happens, you're the first person I want to call. I love that we can have fun no matter where we are. I mean, we've literally traveled the world together. We had fun in a podunk town in the middle of Kentucky. We had fun at this amazing four-star lodge in the middle of Botswana. I mean, we've had some life that we've lived. And whether we had a little bit or we had a lot, I just really enjoy you as a person. I'm like, that's my person. That's the person that hears about it when something makes me want to cry. I have sat down on many couches with you now with a box of tissues. And you're the person I go out to ice cream with to celebrate or whatever, when something really good happens.
Amena Brown:
And that's a big blessing to me to be married to you 10 years and be like, "I love him. I'm in love with him, but I just like him. I like kicking it with him." And I think that is this beautiful thing about us having had that time as friends, that I feel like we have the wonderful combination of being able to say we are friends to each other and that we are lovers.
Matt:
Hey.
Amena Brown:
Hey. And that we have the ability to also be business partners and co-own our business together and do all that. So people have asked us, when we haven't seen people in a while, and they're like, "How are y'all doing? Through the pandemic I mean, and I know y'all work together and you had to shelter in place together," like that. They have sort of a pitiful look on their faces when they say it. And I'm like, I mean, for us, it kind of felt like we'd been quarantined together for, since we've been working together full time...
Matt:
Air ports, hotel rooms, yeah.
Amena Brown:
This has been our life.
Matt:
Roaming around some city that we have no idea where we are, yeah.
Amena Brown:
We had to kind of build a routine there. I do feel like one of the things, and I guess I'll close with this question, babe, because I would love to hear from you what are the things you feel like you've learned and being married to me for 10 years. I feel like one thing that I really wanted to say to some of my friends that they really wanted to get married and I did too. And I remember after I got married, because I was single through all of my twenties, so after I got married, it was sort of like I wanted to go back to my friends and tell them that I think marriage can be wonderful. But I think whether or not your marriage is wonderful is mostly dependent upon the person that you're married to and the person you are in the marriage. It's not the institution itself that's so great are so amazing to me.
Amena Brown:
I'm having a very specific, wonderful experience because I'm married to you. I think one of my other lessons that I had to learn from earlier in our marriage is giving my husband space to do things the way he does them, even if that is different for me. I remember like when we would come off the road, my idea of a day off coming off the road because I'm introverted is like, I just want to lay down. I want to veg out and watch TV. I don't want to have to talk to anybody extra because I have to talk to a bunch of strangers. So I just want to binge watch some TV and eat food and chill. And we would get home and you would be like, I got to get in here and make this music because I got some ideas. I'd be like, "You need to lay down. You need to come in here and watch TV with me."
Amena Brown:
And I had to learn to let you do what you need to do, that your process is different from mine. And that's not a bad thing, but let you have the space you need to be who you are and to be yourself. And that's very important to me, but I had to learn that, y'all. It took me a couple of years before I was like, "Oh yeah, no, cool. You go make music. I'll watch Grey's Anatomy."
Matt:
It took me a couple of years to learn to speak up and say, "Hey, I think I need to get this thing off my chest."
Amena Brown:
Yeah. What are some other things you would say you feel like you've learned in 10 years being married?
Matt:
It's the old, I think, African proverb of, "if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together." I say that that has shown up to be true in every aspect of our life together. Whether it be in our business, there was sometimes where your thing was rocking and rolling and I was setting up t-shirts at your merch booth. Or we came off the road and had some health situations going on and then DJing picked up and took off. And then now we're at a pretty fun intersection where I get to see my friend Amena winning and I'm getting to get some wins too. And I love that. First of all, I just love seeing my friend Amena win. I do believe that we've gone farther because we were together.
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Matt:
I'll say like, even in our personal life, some of the difficult things we've had to walk through, some of the tough things that we've had to figure out how to talk about, how, as an interracial couple, how do we talk about race?
Amena Brown:
Right.
Matt:
I definitely will say that I've grown and learned things that had I not had been married to you, I wouldn't have been in those rooms to hear those things, or I wouldn't have access to that information maybe. I should have found it out another way, but I was very privileged to be in some rooms and hear things and get some education. So I'm a better man because of being with you. I think it goes back to that moment of, do we want to do this exclusively? Well, is there other things out there?
Matt:
Yeah, but the idea of building a foundation and having a place to put your feet down. And you got two sets of feet running at this world, whether it be business, whether it be personal, whether it be, I got something going on that, man, I just can't wrap my brain around or something that's emotionally causing me some stress, man is great to have another set of eyes, another set of ears, somebody who sees the world differently than I see things. And then as we've gone on, us merging our lives together. We're not the same person by age by any [crosstalk 00:48:39].
Amena Brown:
Right. For sure, for sure.
Matt:
We're different. You know what I'm saying?
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Matt:
But there's a lot of things where we're really well to same on. Like, we're not big yellers, neither one of us. You know what I'm saying? We have the carefulest fights you ever heard in your life, y'all. I'm like, "Well, see, I just want to make sure that what you're hearing me say is that... "
Amena Brown:
There's a lot of sighing, a lot of huffs.
Matt:
I just want to be careful that I'm not, and we are... So I'm thankful for those things. You know what I'm saying? But there are some things that's like how we do, like how we have our money together and how we do our bank accounts and how we do our bills, that's not saying anybody else to do that. But these two people, we got together and figured it out.
Matt:
And I will say one thing I feel like I've learned from you is watching you just do the work. You've done the internal work, probably more than anybody I've ever witnessed in my life, and maybe cause I've had a front row seat to some rough times. Watching you do that ongoing work takes me back to Matt who didn't want to be a scrub in this relationship and be like, "Well, I need to do that work too because I want to be a whole me. So that way you can be a whole you and not have to drag me." It's one thing if you find yourself at a moment of exhaustion and somebody's there to help carry you. Everybody needs that sometimes. You know what I'm saying? But it's another thing if somebody has to drag you because you ain't getting up, putting your feet to the ground, doing what you need to do. So I'll say those are some things I've learned is that, man, together, yo, we went for it. And it's so much fun, man.
Amena Brown:
It's way more fun.
Matt:
I still would rather not just be your friend, but...
Amena Brown:
Right, because there's some benefits.
Matt:
I'm glad I didn't have to lose my friend.
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Matt:
Because, yo, I really like you as a friend, man, as a person. You're my homie for real.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. That's true. I do feel like that. And I feel having had a business, I guess, or having been in my career before we met and got married, being married and having walked through a lot of the career things that I had to walk through, you were such a soft place for me, a place to land. You are the first ear of everything. I mean, we're probably each other's first ear for anything that we create make.
Matt:
Yo, check this out.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. And so I really do love that for us. And I feel like there's no way you can stand at the altar at your wedding and know all the things that are going to face you as a couple. There's no way you can know. And maybe if you knew some of those things, you'd be like, no or whatever. Not that you wouldn't marry the person, but you'd be like, "We don't want that. We don't want to go to that."
Matt:
I mean, I can think of a time in my life...
Amena Brown:
That's right. Fair, fair, but not this wedding, at least.
Matt:
Not that 909.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. Okay, please. But there's no way for you to know. Even when I look at our wedding pictures, even though it was just 10 years ago, it feels like you're staring at two kids still. It's like, you're looking at the picture. These two people have no idea that they're going to get booked in Vegas and have to fly into Vegas for a gig. And the gig is on February 15th, but the planners are going to be really pressed about you coming in for a meeting on the 14th, only for you to randomly get these very amazing tickets to see The Beatles Love on Valentine's Day in Vegas. Right?
Amena Brown:
You can't tell those two people that you can't tell those two people all of the losses and hard stuff that they'll go through in life. There's no way that those two people can really be prepared for all they're going to experience, great and not so great. But at 10 years to be like, "I'm glad you were my person that was with me, whatever the times were." And that also gives me a lot of hopefulness and encouragement about the future, that there's a lot more life for us to live.
Matt:
Absolutely.
Amena Brown:
I always tell people, we don't have children, but we're a family, the two of us.
Matt:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
And we still have a lot of dreams out there. And we still have a lot of fun adventures that we have had a chance to take yet. And I love that for our forties, and I love that for the next decades of us being married.
Matt:
I love you, girl.
Amena Brown:
I love you. Happy anniversary, boo. Her with Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti, as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network and partnership with iHeart Radio. Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast.