Our Story – Jake & Markie Stein

When you clicked on this link, you probably didn’t expect to see that we’re not the Joneses, nor are we trying to keep up with them. You see, Jake is my second husband, and I personally started this business during my first marriage. When I got divorced, Mimi was already born, so I kept the name for both myself and my business, and when Jake and I married, it was a LOT of paperwork to change things… so we kept the business name as Markie Jones Photography. But grab your coffee cup and hold on tight, because this is the story of Markie & Jake Stein.

It’s not a fairytale. It’s a raw and real life rollercoaster.

This is probably the part where you expect to find some uber romantic love story about how we met in high school, fell in love and the whole world stopped. In our case, it was more of a rickety roller coaster, than a pretty fairytale love story. Looking back, it’s obvious there was some divine intervention involved, and a few challenges to God that he took mighty seriously.

You see, our story started long before we were ever even thought of as people. Our moms, April (Jake’s) and Paula (Mine), met during story time at the Sumner library somewhere around 1961/1962, when they were three years old. They became the best of friends, ending up attending the same local church, going to elementary, middle and high school together, and eventually, standing beside each other at their own wedding ceremonies. As most of us know, things change when you become adults and while they didn’t talk anywhere near as often (sometimes going years between chats) when they did get together, it was like time hadn’t even passed. (They’re still like that, and see a LOT more of each other now that they’re legally family).

Of course, I grew up in that same church behind the Dairy Freeze in Sumner. Even though I only saw Jake’s mom at special events and holidays, his Grandma Louise was “my” grandma. More than once, she was the one standing between me and trouble, because while I was a good kid, I still had a breaking point. Jake and his cousins would usually attend our summer vacation bible school, and I can still vividly hear my grandpa Paul and his grandma Louise yelling at “Jake and Ben, Knock it off!” Otherwise, Jake and I really didn’t come in contact. He was a few years younger than me, and his red/green color deficiency had him held back in kindergarten. So, we never went to school together or saw each other outside of those VBS summer weeks.

Believe it or not, I’m a bit of a rebel. When you tell me I can’t do something, I’m likely to immediately try to do it. So, when mutual family friends told me to keep the relationship professional and not date Jake, what do you think I did? Oh yeah, I dated Jake. Looking back, the timing was off (Jake was newly sober) and when I found myself pregnant with Gracie, I didn’t want to end up getting divorced again. Instead, we spent a couple years fighting it out and figuring out how to co-parent without any romantic involvement.

In 2016, I quit dating for good. I watched too many people pass through my daughters’ lives and decided I’d had enough. I joked with God that I wouldn’t get serious about anyone again unless he dropped someone on my doorstep. Then one day, Jake showed up four hours early for drop off. He mowed the lawn, watered the garden, did the dishes… and to this day claims it’s because I needed the help. He moved in about a month later to “spend more time with his daughter” and it’s still a running joke that he never moved out. So, it seems, God has a real sense of humor, and you should watch what you challenge him with.

That was May 2017, and by September that year, he’d convinced me to marry him. As we began planning our Halloween 2018 Wedding, I learned my medical benefits would be greatly increasing, so we quietly met up with a small group of friends under the guise of the Sumner Street-of-Treats and signed our marriage license in the Sumner Trackside Pizza. We then proceeded to plan a pop-up Halloween Wedding for October 2018.

Summer of 2019, while I was pregnant with Evan, Jake joined our team when I shoved a camera in his hands to “see what he could do”. This move brought us to where we are today, a husband-and-wife photo + video team. We love serving our families from their weddings through their growing families, Santa Experiences and more.