Dallas & Amy: How It All Began: Hint: The Piano brought us together.

Dallas & Amy Reese Wedding Day May 10 1997 Hendersonville NC with the Phillips Family, left to right: Brian McVey holding Amanda, Karen Phillips McVey holding Sarah, Amy, Dallas, Kathie and Bill Phillips, Jon Phillips.

My wife Amy and I celebrate our 28th Wedding Anniversary today, Saturday, May 10, 2025.

It doesn't seem that long ago when we began this journey. Now, seven children later, we just had our first grandchild. Our oldest son, Logan, was married a year ago in June to Tabitha Gosnell Reese, and on March 10, 2025, Tabitha gave birth to Levi Thomas Reese. Hard to believe where the years go. The circle of life keeps revolving. Time never stops. But if anything, I have learned to savor the short, special moments more. It seems the moments we want to last never last long enough. I tell myself now to live in the moment. Smile, soak up the laughter, the joy, the accomplishments, the experiences. Because, as with everything, it all fades, and like the leaves in fall, we will all pass on, to leave our legacy to the next generations.

As I reflect and wonder what the next years will be like, I am also thankful for the many faithful people in my family and my wife's family who have taken up God's call to join together in holy matrimony and cling to one another in sickness and in health, till death do us part.

Here's hoping you find the joy and happiness of a meaningful relationship. It's the best. Families are the best. Kids and grandkids are the greatest blessings from God. And for all that, and for my wife, I am thankful and have eternal gratitude to God. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dallas & Amy's wedding Day, May 10, 1997, with my mom, dad, brother Daryl, sister Kathy, nephews Dillon and Riley, and niece Madelyne Jones.

St. James Episcopal Church, Hendersonville, North Carolina

Here's an essay I penned earlier this week in anticipation of today. It tells a small part of our story on how we met, all because of a piano.

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In this picture from our house in South Charlotte off Carmel Rd, in 2000, my son Logan is about one year old. He is playing the Yamaha CP70 piano I played the night I met his mother, Amy, in February 1993. I hate that I got rid of this piano, but it was heavy and bulky, and down the road, we didn't have room for it in the next house we bought.

Today, Saturday, May 10, 2025, I will pause to reflect on 28 years of marriage to Amy Kristine Phillips Reese. The union came about because of a chance meeting at Giovanni's Italian Restaurant off Carmel Road on a cool winter's night in February 1993. Amy had moved to Charlotte following her graduation from Randolph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, Virginia. She had moved to Charlotte just after breaking up with a long-term boyfriend. It was a new start for her. For the first four months of that year, I drove back and forth weekly to Charlotte from Nashville, Tennessee, because I knew I could make a substantial income playing music in my hometown area of North Carolina. The first gig I got while trying to line up work was playing piano every Wednesday at Giovanni's in the old Carmel Commons Shopping Center, not too far from the Harris YMCA. About a year before, I purchased an old Yamaha CP70 baby grand piano in Nashville for 300 bucks. It was portable(LOL) but weighed about 500 pounds. It came apart into two pieces for travel—the section with the hammers and keys, and then the top half with the real piano strings. I'd have to get a couple of bouncers at every club or venue to help me move the piano inside for shows. At the time, I was driving a 1989 Honda Civic. After about a year of hauling this massive piano around in the back of my Honda, it cracked my rear axle. I had to get a new axle for the car that was stronger to handle all the weight I carried to gigs(the piano, speakers, mixer, and other outboard gear). These were the days before the lightweight digital pianos of today. The piano I haul around now weighs about 22 lbs. Much better for an old man's back.

I played that Yamaha CP70 piano and sang many Billy Joel, Elton John, Don Henley, and Bruce Hornsby songs every Wednesday from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. in that winter of 1993. The ad on the left is from the Wednesday, March 17, 1993, Charlotte Observer. And you can see I was playing Wednesday and Friday nights at Giovanni's.(Wed. March 17 and Friday, March 19, on this particular week.) After the Wednesday shows in January and February of that year, I'd drive back to Nashville, Tennessee, to play my weekend gigs. This continued from January 1993 until late spring, off and on, as some weeks I could book weekend gigs in Charlotte and stick around. By late spring, I had finally found enough work to permanently move back to Charlotte, NC. Amy would come on Wednesdays that winter after work with friends. The first night we met was in February 1993. She was 22 years old. I was 28. We talked briefly, but she was dating someone. But I loved her spark. She had so much personality. But I knew it was a dead end if she was already going out with somebody.

I let it rest. I mostly talked to her roommate, Kristin Spencer. We became friends more than any of the others in the group because I always spoke to Kristin when this group of girls came out to see me play. They followed me around town for several years, showing up at shows I played through the summer at Giovanni's until the restaurant was sold to former NBA star Kenny Gattison. He bought the place and renamed it Gattions, and thus Giovannis ended on September 1, 1993. But I'm thankful for Eric, the manager there, for taking a shot on my music and giving me the gig. It changed the course of my life.

The Virginia private school girls, as I began to call them, continued to see me play all over Charlotte for the next several years, at Rainbow Deli, The Graduate Food and Pub, and other venues I played. The funny thing is, down the road, they said they wanted me to sing at their eventual weddings. At that time, no one knew I would sing at one of their weddings, mine and Amy's. Lol. Whenever I'd see them at a show, I would ask Kristin if Amy was going out with anybody. I was fixated on this girl. I couldn't put my finger on it. But now I know, God was directing me to her. In the meantime, I was going out with several other girls, just passing the time to have somebody to do some fun stuff with. But I wasn't happy, because I wanted to go out with Amy. My roommate Kenny Nazemetz would joke, You'll never get married. You're a player. By the summer of 1994, I was dating five girls simultaneously. It was a big joke at the house we rented in south Charlotte, because one would show up for lunch and one for dinner when I was gone to a gig, and my other roommates would have to deflect the girls and lie for me, so I wouldn't get caught going out with so many girls at once. Lol!

Amy and several of her Virginia private school crew here at her condo in south Charlotte in 1993. Left to right: Kristin Spencer, Amy Phillips, and Parker Ivey. Others in this crew were Anne Sawyer, Helen Coker, Anne Pinckney, Janine McInerney, and probably some others I'm missing.

Fast forward to the early fall of 1994, Kristin told me one night that Amy was now single. So I made my move. I asked her out. It was after a Halloween weekend show at the Rainbow Deli Arboretum in south Charlotte. She and all her friends were there watching me sing. But she didn't want to go out with a musician. She insisted she would have nothing in common with me. But I had been talking to her roommate for several years, and her roommate had an intuition. She knew Amy would love me after she got to know me. Amy agreed to go out with me after some authoritative coaxing by her roommate, Kristin Spencer. Our first date was November 9, 1994. The next day, I dropped every other girl I had been going out with. I knew.

After our first date, we sat in my car at Amy's place on Heathstead Drive across from the Harris YMCA and talked for hours. I went home at probably 1 a.m. and told my roommate Kenny, "That's the girl I'm going to marry." He laughed and said, "Yeah, right." But I knew.

And now I know it was the best decision we ever made.

So, November 1994 changed our collective lives. A relationship began that has stood the test of time.

It seems but a moment since we stood together, pledging our lives to each other in front of God and family and friends at St. James Episcopal Church in Hendersonville, North Carolina, in the spring of 1997. Yet the years, like ripples on the still pond of my grandfather's farm I used to walk as a child in Jefferson, South Carolina, have spread outward, bearing us seven children and, as of this March, a grandson, Levi Thomas Reese, born to our son Logan and his wife, Tabitha, who married in June of 2024 here in Hilton Head.

Thus, the Elton John song, Circle of Life, plays repeatedly in my head as I think about how the seconds, hours, days, months, and years continue to turn unceasingly. Every year, another trip around the sun brings me closer to the end of this phase I love dearly.

But time is no respecter of our desires; it flows like a river, indifferent to the moments we hold fast. Our kids' laughter, the warmth of not-as-common family gatherings, and the brief interactions via text or FaceTime on birthdays and anniversaries. And time keeps moving through the pride my wife and I feel when another child hits a milestone. So many little moments have come together to make the past 28 years the best of our lives. They are strung briefly upon the thread of our recollections before they slip into the vastness of what was. Hence, I try to write as much as I can when I can. So I don't forget what we were thinking or doing on a specific date.

Several years back, on my birthday, I decided to drive to Maine instead of flying. My family had left a week earlier and went up. I had initially planned to fly, but since I had to work so much, driving would be fun. It would be much-needed stress relief. I love driving through New York City. Being from NASCAR country, I always love driving in the city to prove I can be more reckless than New Yorkers. Lol. Also, I could bring my bike along to exercise along the way, and when I reached my final destination, Wells Beach, Maine, I'd have it with me for the week to ride some miles.

Before leaving Hilton Head, I decided to stop in Massachusetts at Walden Pond. I have read Henry David Thoreau's Walden Pond many times. I envisioned it much like the pond I walked to as a child with my grandfather in South Carolina. I wanted to get there early, so on the first day of travel, I stopped and stayed at my sister's house near Raleigh, NC. Then, I drove to southern Massachusetts the next day. Then I encamped at a hotel in South Massachusetts and woke before the sun on June 17. I made my way to Walden Pond before the sun came up. It was there that I had an epiphany. There are so many more years behind me than in front of me. I must savor the moments more.

Amy & Dallas off the coast of southern Thailand, December 1995

In my quiet hours, I have learned to live deliberately within these moments, taste their essence fully, and let my soul be more present in the joy or sorrow of the now. All things pass, like the leaves in fall, and we, too, shall return to the earth, leaving only the legacy of our lives to live on and pass through the following generations.

In contemplation of the years ahead, I find myself grateful. Most of all, to my parents who gave me piano lessons when I began third grade. Without those piano lessons and my love for music, I may never have met what I believe is the best person in the world for me. Because I never would have played that weekly Wednesday piano show at Giovanni's. And we wouldn't have the world's seven best kids, daughter-in-law, and grandson. So thank you, God, for my parents and the piano. And my love for it. It brought me to a life richer than I ever could have imagined. I am also very grateful to God for the sturdy roots of my extended family—mine and Amy's—whose members have heeded the call to join in sacred marriage, to walk hand in hand through the seasons of health and trial until death's inevitable summons. This is the truest wealth: not in money, fame, or success, but in kinship, in the laughter of children, in the tender look of a grandchild. Marriage is divine. The union of a man and woman, ordained by God. And it is all made manifest in the simplicity of love.

To any who read these words, I say: seek the profound contentment of a shared life, a family bound together by affection and purpose. There is no higher calling, no greater joy. For Amy, our children, and the grandchild who has appeared in our story, I offer my thanks and gratitude to God. Eternal God, always and forever, the Alpha and Omega, who was here before time began and will be here long after. I have but one life to live and give. And I am proud I gave my life to my wife, Amy Phillips Reese, and together, with God, we created the next generation to live on from us. And so it goes. We didn't get rich, we didn't get famous. But we made the greatest gift God could give us—our children, in our image and, more importantly, in the image of our Creator.

Thus, I mark this anniversary not with fanfare but with the quiet reverence of one who has glimpsed the sublime in the ordinary and found it good. The love of one in a marriage ordained by God gives us the solace we need.

"There is no remedy for love but to love more."

(Journal of Henry David Thoreau, July 25, 1839)

Dallas Reese

Hilton Head SC

May 10, 2025