I Worked Out of Workaholism… And My Life Is Working Better

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Today. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show. From the arts to sports, and from business to history, and everything in between, including your stories, send them to ouramericanstories.com.

That's ouramericanstories.com. They're some of our favorites. And now we bring you another story from Steve Trice, and he's the founder of a leading electronics company called Jasco Products, who tells us the story of his marriage, and in light of an upbringing of many divorces and alcoholism. Here's Steve. When Nianne and I talked about getting married when we were 23, 24 years old, I told her at one point, I said, you don't want to marry me. I don't think you'd like it. And she said, what do you mean? I want to marry you. And I said, well, I get up and go to work at seven o'clock in the morning, and I get home at 11 o'clock at night, because I had been trained up by my daddy. And I learned how to be, I wasn't an alcoholic, but I was a workaholic.

I was getting my value out of my job. And she said, I thought very naively at the time, Steve, that's enough for me. That's okay.

That'll be great. I said, oh, okay. So we went ahead and got married. And a year later, we had our first child.

It wasn't that literal. It wasn't 11 o'clock every night. And then we had our second child pretty quick after that. At that point, I was off to Target stores in Minneapolis, I'd leave Minneapolis, I'd go to Hong Kong, fly back to Tokyo, come back home, get back on the airplane and go to Minneapolis.

It was just constant. And one day, Nan said, Steve, tomorrow, Saturday, I've accepted a part time job. I'm going to be working at a gift shop. I said, oh, that's neat. Who's going to take care of the kids?

And she said, Steve, I've been taking care of the kids for the last few years. It's your problem. You figure it out. The previous Saturday was the last Saturday that I ever worked. I never worked another Saturday.

I had always worked on Saturday. So I started becoming a little bit better. And then we had a significant problem a few months later. And she said, Steve, this thing of you being gone all the time, it's not working. And I said, but wait a minute, do you remember what she said back before we got married that, you know, 7 to 11, if that was fine, that was all you needed? She said, guess what? I've changed the rules.

It's not going to work anymore. And I said, oh, and after being raised in the family that I was raised in, I was scared to death that I was going to lose my family. And I would on that day and I look back, did I know the Lord Jesus Christ?

No. Can I look back and see his hand on my life all the way through my life? And that day I knew that I didn't want to lose my family. And I knew that I was getting ready to. And I went to my dad the next day and I said, dad, I'm not working after six o'clock anymore.

So now I'm Monday through Friday, early in the morning until six o'clock and it got better and better and better and better. And I worked out of workaholism and learned it and learned to take care of my family, to be a Boy Scout leader, to go on camp outs with my kids, to go to the lake and spend weekends and water ski and all those things and just loved being a family. We had a fight one day, I remember exactly where it was right outside of our master bathroom in our bedroom. We had had an argument and with my background and my mentality and I was fed up and I said, honey, I'm out of here.

She kind of took about two steps forward and stood right in front of me and she looked up at me and she said, Steve, you might be able to walk out that door, but I just want you to know I can't. She said, I said, till death do us part and I believe it and I'm committed to it and you got to do what you got to do, but what I hope you'll do is stand here with me and we'll work it out together. I can't say enough about how my bride has helped me in my life. My bride and aunt and I have now been married for 48, almost 49 years. Our marriage is growing. Our marriage is getting better every day. We pray together. We ask the Lord to grow our marriage.

Our sons have been married 19 and 20 years. We pray for them that the Lord will teach our sons how to love their wives, their wives how to love and respect their husbands, that they'll teach our sons and their wives how to train up their children in the way that they should go. Our oldest grandchild is 13 and we pray for her husband. She doesn't have a husband yet.

She will someday maybe. And we pray for our little 11 and 10 year old, three little guys. We pray for their wives.

We pray for their children, their grandchildren and their great grandchildren and that they will grow up as God's disciples following him. And great job as always to Alex and a special thanks to Steve Trice for sharing that story. And it's a humbling story, but that's a lot of guys and frankly, a lot of women, too. We have our problems that we bring to any marriage and workaholism. Well, in the end, that was Steve's getting his identity through work and having a wife who loved him enough to bring him out of that.

As he put it, I worked out of being a workaholic. Steve Trice's story, his brides, his family here on Our American Story. Music Folks, if you love the great American stories we tell and love America like we do, we're asking you to become a part of the Our American Stories family. If you agree that America is a good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly gift of $17.76 is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to OurAmericanStories.com now and go to the donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming.

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