THE BUSINESS OF LOVE

The old adage says business and pleasure don’t mix, but husband-and-wife teams around the world are becoming great successes in their co-owned ventures. A spouse is a person’s greatest support system, so why just be romantic partners when you can be business partners, too? Here, we get to know five local married couples who share a passion for their work – and each other.

BY KAYLOR JONES / PHOTOS BY CLAUDIA JOHNSTONE

Cody and Felicia Walker were just 25 years old when they got a call that would change the course of their lives – Cody’s older brother, Paul Walker, had died in a single-car collision while leaving an event for his charity, Reach Out WorldWide.

“Paul played a huge role in where I am today,” Cody says. “I was the youngest, and our parents separated when I was in middle school. Paul really fell into the big brother role and molded me in a lot of ways. I looked up to him because he had everything – looks, money, personality – and yet he was just a normal, laid-back person.”

After the accident, the couple moved from Oregon to Los Angeles to be closer to family, with Cody and his brother Caleb standing in to complete Paul’s remaining scenes in Furious 7 of the Fast & Furious franchise. When the board of directors for Reach Out WorldWide (www.roww.org) asked Cody to be the new CEO, he saw a chance to make an impact on a cause that had been close to his brother’s heart.

Founded by Paul after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the nonprofit is comprised of skilled first responders and other medical and construction professionals that respond to natural disasters across the globe. ROWW’s boots on the ground philosophy means that small teams are deployed as quickly and efficiently as possible to assist local experts in locations that are sometimes overlooked by larger nonprofits.

Cody and Felicia – a former paramedic and a former civil engineer, respectively –have recently made a foray into TV as well on The Weather Channel’s Fast: Home Rescue, which follows their team as they rebuild houses that have been devastated by natural disaster.

“ROWW as an organization has never done anything like this,” Felicia says. “But we did what we do best – we adapted. The most rewarding part was changing the lives of people who had lost their homes. These were good people in a bad situation and having the opportunity to know and help them was beyond anything we could’ve ever dreamed.”