When Carey Eskridge saw his future wife, Christina Vallery, he thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

“And then after the first 24 hours I also thought she was the smartest, funniest, most beautiful woman in the world,” he remembered with a smile.

The attraction was instantaneous for Vallery as well.

“It was the strangest feeling because as soon as I laid eyes on him, I knew I would love him forever. Don’t mistake this for what is traditionally known as love at first sight. It was a deep feeling of intuition, of past and future lives, and of radiant belonging,” she said. “I’ve never had that feeling since, about anything. My thought wasn’t: I must have you! I need you! I want you. It was more like: whatever happens, I will love this man forever.”

The two met in 1998 while Eskridge was working at the Texas Legislature, and Vallery walked into the office for an interview.

“I immediately began scheming how to talk to her. When she got hired, I had a party specifically so I could invite her. The next day, we walked our dogs together, went to dinner and a movie, and we haven’t been apart since. I fell in love more or less instantly, but I don’t think of it as an ‘ah ha’ moment necessarily. There was a seemingly unending series of events that just kept confirming the obvious, including the fact that I just wanted to spend all my time with her. But I do vividly remember walking into an Austin dive called the Texas Showdown and the band Mr. Bungle was at maximum volume, and Christina actually knew who they were, and I was like: ‘oh, it’s on.’”

Vallery shares a similar story.

“Aside from the endless love moment I had at first sight, I knew it was a mutual feeling the first week we dated,” she recalled. “We went out every night that week, really just one rolling, long week of going to work and finding reasons to keep time together going. I think it was the third night we were together that we went to a wildly inappropriate arthouse movie at a small independent theater. In this movie, there was an extremely awkward breakup scene, and one character says to another: ‘You think I’m shit? Well, you’re wrong, ‘cause I’m champagne, and you’re shit. Until the day you die, you, not me, will always be shit.’ And we both start cracking up. It was then that I knew.”

They spent the next decade traveling the globe together, deepening their friendship, building their careers in Austin, Texas — and laughing along the way.

“We worked multiple jobs for almost two years to pay for our own wedding and knowing from the beginning that we could work together under stress toward a common goal and see it through without taking out the stress on each other really made any future challenge that much easier,” Eskridge said.

In 2010, the couple welcomed daughter Lola, whom Vallery calls their “everything.”

“With our daughter, we have been extremely lucky to have had the opportunity to travel, a lot of it tied into my work and international opportunities I’ve had,” said Vallery, who is a chief design officer for a large company. “It is an absolute joy to experience a new place with Carey. What a marvel of a world we live in, what wonders we can see, and what a gift to have experienced the depth of diversity that travel can offer.”

In 2020, after visiting Orcas and dreaming of relocating for years, they purchased and renovated a house in Eastsound. Within the year, Eskridge became executive director of the chamber of commerce, and Vallery works remotely with a view of evergreens out her window.

“All day, every day, Christina sacrifices for me and Lola. Her outrageous dedication to ensuring we live the best life is like waking up to a plane sky-writing it across the horizon every damn morning,” Eskridge said.

Vallery says “nothing could be more romantic” than her husband’s fire tending.

“Since we moved to Orcas, Carey has made an art of fire tending and does so with devotion and care, craft and thoughtfulness during most of the days and nights,” she said.

Both said goodbye to their dads much earlier than expected.

“The loss of both our dads way too early was absolutely impactful to us individually and as a couple and family, and we’re still reeling all these years later. They never got to see Orcas,” Eskridge said.

Vallery agreed: “We’ve shared loss before that, had tragedy, weaved our way through grief. We’ve overcome failure, disappointment, endless mounds of stress, but nothing quite compares to the loss of cornerstone figures in your life, even when the relationships aren’t storybook. When you lose someone you are connected with in your soul, you are never the same. We managed to emerge as different people after those losses and get closer rather than push or pull away. It doesn’t always happen that way. I believe we are a deep comfort to one another, and we are bound by our wounds as much as our joy.”

The couple is happiest together when deep in conversation or having an epic private dance party in their kitchen until the wee hours of the morning.

“Carey is an incredibly devoted person, in love with his life, with me and our daughter. I feel so lucky,” Vallery said. “He also makes me coffee every day, no matter where we are — if he has to make it, fetch it or buy it, he does.”

Eskridge cherishes his wife’s wit, sense of humor and personal integrity. The two find each other as interesting as the day they met, and continue to revel in their friendship.

“After 28 years together there are too many favorite memories to count, but I will often find myself thinking about that first day we spent together and being at my house late that night sitting side-by-side on my torn up pleather couch that needed a piece of plywood under the seat cushions so it didn’t collapse in on itself listening to Al Green and Pavement and Yo La Tengo and James Brown records,” Carey said.

Added Vallery: “There are too many memories to count. A lifetime of treasures.”