Couple finds love at the office

“She hated me,” he says.

“I didn’t hate you,” she says.

“Yeah, you did,” he says.

“No, I didn’t,” she replies, then adds, “Well, we had just met.”

It was 2004, and Jason Fenton and Carmen Terry were both working on President Bush’s campaign trail in Pennsylvania. She was interning for Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas), while he was a staff assistant for then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas). The pair had been recruited by the National Republican Congressional Committee.

After long days of campaigning, there was more work to be done, so some of the more senior campaign staff, like Jason, took to calling interns working in the offices of Republican members to entice them to come on the campaign trail.

Carmen was one of those who had just returned to the congressional office.

“They had a lot of people calling interns, heckling them to get them back out to work another day on the campaign trail,” says Carmen, 25. “I was the only one in the office that day and they told me that I would never get a job on Capitol Hill and that I was a loser intern and they just went on and on and on. Basically any way to guilt me into going [back to the trail].”    

That November, Carmen landed a job on the Hill as Rep. John Carter’s (R-Texas) scheduler. Jason arrived two months later to work as one of Carter’s legislative assistants.

“When he came into the office, I said, ‘I know you from somewhere,’ ” says Carmen, who is now communications director. “And then it clicked. I was like, ‘Ah, you’re that guy who called me, giving me a hard time about not coming out.

And he was like, ‘No, no, it was my counterpart.’ So I said, ‘Well then you were calling other people, so…’ ”

“But I wasn’t,” protests Jason, 27. “She’s still convinced I was.”

Little did they know that almost three years later they would still be working together. In fact, they sit just 10 feet apart, only now they also share an apartment and have promised themselves to each other until death do them part.  

In December, the couple exchanged traditional wedding vows in a one-aisle Baptist church in Carmen’s hometown of White Deer, Texas. The reception was held in a refurbished barn, which they entered to the tune of “Hail to the Chief.”

Many guests played a role in the wedding: Carmen’s uncles catered; Jason’s former choir director sold him the gems for the wedding ring; the whole family decorated; and the officiating pastor was Jason’s preacher, whom he has known since he was 5. The band comprised a former Carter intern and his two brothers.

The wedding theme was Christmas. For six months, Carmen’s mother had collected more than 35 Christmas trees, some from alleys, others from the Salvation Army, but together, Jason says, they gave the feeling of being in a secluded forest.

Donning cowboy boots, the happy Texans danced their first dance to George Strait’s “It Just Comes Natural,” which they chose because it was upbeat but not over-the-top cheesy. Toward the end of the evening, as fresh snow lay on the ground, guests were invited to take a tree home as a party favor.

 The Fentons then piled in their car and drove for two and a half days back to the East Coast, where they flew out for Jamaica for a honeymoon on white sand beaches.

Back in Rep. Carter’s office, aides wonder whether the congressman ever put something in his staff’s water — Carmen and Jason are not the first office couple to wed. Several years ago, the legislative counsel began dating the scheduler, and they also ended up in wedlock.

Carmen and Jason initially tried to hide their romance from the rest of the office, but that did not turn out so well.

“They all suspected something because we —” Carmen starts to say.

“We’d go out as an office to something like a movie or some event, and the guy who lived three blocks from me would offer me a ride home and I’d be like, ‘Oh, no, that’s OK, I’ll ride with Carmen,” he says, finishing her thought in true married fashion. “I probably wasn’t as sly as I thought I was.”

Rep. Carter was the last to discover the blossoming relationship between the couple, but as soon as he did, he began teasing Carmen: “What happens if things turn south between you two?”

“Well, you’ll just have to fire Jason,” she joked back.

Carmen’s father happens to be sheriff of her home county of Carson County, Texas, which at first intimidated Jason.  

“The first time I went home, that was a lot of fun,” Jason says sarcastically. “He was like, ‘Yeah, let me show you the jail, and this is my gun. This is my other gun. This is my big gun.’ ”

Jokes aside, Jason and his new father-in-law get along well.

 “It’s real nice to have somebody that’s not always questioning what I do,” he says. “He’s a friend in addition to being a father-in-law.”

It has only been a little more than a month since they got married, and as much as they are in love, they admit that making their marriage work requires effort.

“When people say it is work, it is definitely work,” Jason says, mentioning that he has started making the bed in the morning, something he never did in his bachelor days.

“It is [work],” Carmen agrees.  

The Fentons eventually want to return to Texas, where, they joke, they will try to work apart from each other. They hope to start a family out there, but for that they may have to give up their current “family”: cats Jake and Jack.  

“Trade in the cats for kids,” Carmen says, laughing.

“And so it begins,” Jason says, musing at the quirks of married life.