“It was the magic of public radio and social sports,” laughs Chris Hendricks, as he’s asked about how he and his fiancée, Kristi Soch, met.
The two were living in the New York City area and were on competing ZogSports teams. After hitting if off at a party, Kristi and Chris decided to see if there was a deeper connection between them. “It was a pretty fast romance, because I was having to move for work to D.C.,” explains Chris, a special agent in the Air Force. “It’s no lie that our intellectual interests and the deeper aspect of our relationship had to emerge quite quickly.” He says that public radio became a connecting factor between the two, especially after Kristi found that Chris’s clock radio was set to NPR.
Kristi names “This American Life” and “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me” as two of her favorite programs, and agrees that their shared love of public radio deepened after they began seriously dating. By the time Chris’s job brought him here to Texas, the two were engaged. But after having lived together for a little while, they found they already had many of the traditional wedding gifts. So Kristi--who follows the bridal blogs with the best of them, she notes--says she came up with the idea of augmenting their traditional registry with a call for donations to their new hometown station, Texas Public Radio. Both Chris and Kristi are fans of NPR as well as classical music, and wanted to strengthen their connection to San Antonio through TPR membership.
“We have plenty of stuff,” Chris adds. “But we realized public radio’s longevity and vitality is as important as anything we could get.”
The couple is to be married in St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, in July, 2014.
So, whether you're here to honor Chris and Kristi, or just show your love for TPR, here's the link to our online pledge form. Thanks for your support!
