Real Estate Love Stories

Commercial real estate is all about relationships, so it’s not surprising that we’ve found a handful of real estate types who’ve taken it to the next level: marriage.

Josh & Stephanie Hedderich

Parmenter asset manager Josh Hedderich landed a Dallas dream job as an analyst at Crow Holdings following his graduation from Indiana University in 2001. Just three years later, Stephanie Hedderich (now JLL agency leasing senior brokerage assistant) began working at Crow in the multifamily and land group. After a few smiles across the open office, Josh worked up the nerve to introduce himself and was immediately mesmerized by her smile. Five minutes later, he admitted that he couldn’t remember her name (she couldn’t remember his either, so they were even). The duo loves to travel and their 3-year-old daughter, Piper, is already an American Airlines AAdvantage member. Here’s the family 12,000 feet above sea level in Breckenridge in 2013.

Jonathan & Charlotte Cooper 

Jonathan and Charlotte Cooper go one step further than simply working in the same industry; they both work at Venture Commercial, where he’s an SVP and she’s a VP. Jonathan had been with Venture several years when Charlotte Walley joined the company in 2006. Her first assignment was working with Venture partner John Zikos. Jonathan and Charlotte got to know each other while working together with John finding sites in North Texas for client LA Fitness. Within six months they were dating. They got married in 2012 on Lake Como in Italy. Here, they’re scuba diving in Turks and Caicos. 

They share a home near White Rock Lake with their two dogs, Cocoa and Kage (pictured along with one of their former foster dogs). They volunteer with Paws in the City animal rescue. At work, Jonathan’s main focus is on tenant rep and retail investment sales, while Charlotte mostly reps landlords. While they don’t work directly together very often, they’re able to share valuable information from both sides of the retail landscape that can lead to matching tenants with the right space and vice versa. 

Beverly & Joseph Pitchford

Crescent Real Estate managing director Joseph Pitchford and Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty sales associate Beverly Pitchford first crossed paths in the customs line at the Cancun airport before going their separate ways. He flew to Cuba and she stayed in Cancun. Several weeks later they ran into each other at the gym. The couple tells us they understand the demands working in real estate have on each other’s work life. They help one another with ideas and connections that can cross over between commercial and residential real estate; they’ve even shared a client on a few occasions. The challenges: talking about things other than real estate, although their daughters provide some enjoyable alternatives. They like to mix some work with pleasure, taking their restaurant research out to try all the new restaurants. (They have to keep their clients up to date.) But, they keep confidential information to themselves. Beverly still doesn’t know which top secret restaurant is coming to Crescent’s new McKinney & Olive project in Uptown. 

Greg & Jennie McDonald

Married for 35 years, The Weitzman Group EVP Greg McDonald and Cantrell McCulloch corporate account executive Jennie McDonald like to tell people they met at a truck stop. Who says romance is dead? One of Greg’s friends from Lake Highlands High School was dating a lady who was friends with Jennie and they set up a casual meeting at the old Mecca on Harry Hines for lunch without telling either of them what they were doing. Greg tells us he “pursued her for a few years before she caught me.” Greg says they got some great Mavericks seats when Jennie hooked up Mark Cuban for the taxes on his plane. 

Sam & Torrey Littlejohn

JLL VP Torrey Littlejohn met her husband Sam (Retail Solutions) when she moved to Dallas in 1999, and they have been inseparable ever since. They’ve been inking deals like crazy; Torrey was part of the team that relocated Toyota’s North American HQ to Plano and worked on the 160k SF HQ relo for EnLink Midstream to One Arts Plaza. Sam and his colleagues recently won the tenant rep assignment for Freebirds World Burrito and are actively looking for new sites in the DFW market. When they can get away from work, they love to travel and spend time with their kids, Zoe (7) and Roman (2). The couple recently took a trip to Asia to explore Singapore, Thailand and South Korea.