SEQUIM – Love is easy to find here. Walk inside Marunde Muscle, the gym at 235 E. Washington St., and the real thing – relaxed and joyful – is heard in the voices of two couples.
Their stories differ greatly in some ways, but they’re similar in others.
Jesse and Callie Marunde, a pair of personal trainers, knew very soon after they met on May 11, 2002, that they were right for each other.
That day Jesse, a Sequim-bred winner of strongman competitions around the world, was at another contest in Athens, Ohio, where Callie was a university student.
They hit it off.
She moved to Washington, where both worked at Gold’s Gym in Renton.
“She was my boss,” said Jesse.
“Nothing’s really changed,” he added, watching his wife guide Sara and Walt Johnson through some weight training exercises.
“We have the same passions and pursuits,” he added.
“We have so much fun being together . . . two weeks after I met her, I knew.
“Since then, IÂ never had a doubt she was the one for me.”
Jesse bought a ring for Callie four months before he proposed on Sept. 18, 2003.
“I was waiting for the right moment,” he recalled.
He waited until they were standing at the base of Victoria Falls in Zambia, where they had gone for the World’s Strongest Man competition.
Marunde didn’t win that one.
Instead he ruptured a disc.
Since then, however, the Marundes have been building each other up.
He goes with her to strongwoman competitions, and she accompanies him to many of his events.
Callie is also athletic coordinator for the World’s Strongest Man Super Series of competitions.
Organizers “realized she was good at bossing big men around,” Jesse joked.
Callie said her husband’s size – he’s 6-feet, 4-inches tall and weighs between 285 and 315 pounds – belies his gentleness and compassion, two qualities that swept her off her feet.
“I met him, we hung out all weekend in Ohio, and I called my dad and said, ‘I’ve met the guy I’m going to marry.'”
Their March 2, 2004, wedding took place at Hawaii’s Diamond Head crater, with Callie in a bikini and Jesse in surfer shorts.
Then came reality, of course.
The Marundes moved to Sequim because Jesse’s 8-year-old son, Dawson, lives here with his mother.
“I quit my football career to come to Sequim to be a dad,” Jesse said.
“Being a parent is more important.”
Jesse and Callie opened Marunde Muscle and began providing personal training for clients such as the Johnsons.
He’ll go without her to Pasadena, Calif., on Thursday for the All-American Strongman Competition.
Jesse’s schedule requires frequent long-distance travel from April through October, and last year he made 16 domestic trips and flew overseas nine times.
That, Jesse says, poses the biggest challenge to his marriage.
“It’s a lot of packing,” he said, adding, “if I were to describe 2006 in three words, they would be: constant jet-lag recovery.”
The Marundes will be home together more this year, however.
This spring, Callie and Jesse will become parents again.
Their son, already named Jesse, is due June 4.
