Marriage at first sight

Kasie and Robert Craft's isn't a traditional love story.

In a few short hours in 2007, they decided they wanted to be together and began planning their future -- even moving to Alaska together a short time later. At first, Kasie's parents didn't believe in her whirlwind romance and thought there was no way she would wait for her future husband through two deployments.

But she had already made up her mind.

When Robert Craft talks about meeting Kasie at the Pizza Hut in Anna, Illinois, the first thing he recalls is it was a cold day.

A friend of Robert's worked with Kasie at the restaurant and told her Robert was looking for an army wife. Not thinking much of it, Kasie said, "Yeah, I could do that."

The Craft family, Robert, left, Hayden, Hunter and Kasie, pose for a photo Sunday, Feb. 1, 2015 in Anna, Ill. (Fred Lynch)

And that's how their romance began.

The day after Robert turned 18, he enlisted in the Army, and after basic training, was heading to Anchorage, Alaska.

Before shipping out, he and Kasie talked often, getting to know each other using the once-popular social media site Myspace. But it was nothing serious. The two talked for two hours after Kasie's closing shift on that chilly September night of their first meeting, and by the end of their date they had agreed: they were going to get married.

Now, sitting in their home in Anna, cuddling with their 6-year-old son, Hunter, as 4-year-old Hayden zoomed through the hallway on her scooter, it seemed as if the Crafts had finally started to settle in to their young family.

In their seven years of marriage, the couple have battled through two deployments, two difficult pregnancies, planning a wedding from separate continents, losing friends to war, moving six times and undergoing eight surgeries between the pair.

Exactly three months after their first date, Robert proposed with a Build-A-Bear he affectionately named "Marime." She wore a white gown, with his voice recorded into her paw, asking Kasie to marry him. It was 7 a.m. when Robert came over to Kasie's parents' house to propose, but in Robert's mind, "If I was going to be engaged to her, it might as well have been for the whole day," he said with a laugh.

Things are never static in the Craft family, and early on their motto developed into "we can do hard things." But Kasie said she's never questioned it. At 20 she moved to Anchorage by herself, met some of Robert's friends at the airport, and continued forging ahead with her chosen role of army wife.

"You know, there's so many people who say they were so nervous on their wedding day or they were so nervous when he proposed -- and for me it just worked," Kasie said. "It didn't really click with us that, 'Hey, we're supposed to be nervous about this.' It's like I'm supposed to be with him and I knew he was stationed in Alaska, so I was like, 'This is where I've got to go.'"

Kasie recalled the letters and emails during Robert's 15 months of deployment in Iraq, then the nine months in Afghanistan afterward. They got married in between the two deployments and until they did, their dating life was different from most.

While an average couple might sit quietly in a movie theater, Kasie waited anxiously for the next letter or phone call from Robert.

Kasie Craft shows an early photograph of herself with her husband, Robert, on the wall of their home Sunday, Feb. 1, 2015 in Anna, Ill. (Fred Lynch)

"I think we got to know each other better than most people do," she said.

Amid a dangerous time during the Iraq War, Kasie said she sometimes went an entire month without hearing from her husband, and that was the hardest part.

"Sometimes I would get a call at three o'clock in the morning and it'd be a 30-second phone call, but all he would say is, 'I'm OK. I'm going to bed.' But that's all I needed to hear, you know, just that he was OK," she said.

The couple had their first child, Hunter, in Alaska, then two years later Hayden came along while they were stationed in Germany. It was during their time in Germany that Kasie developed a brain tumor that left her temporarily blind.

Robert came home from Afghanistan at the time, and with the help of Kasie's father, she slowly recovered.

Robert also struggled with various injuries during the war, and is still battling post-traumatic stress disorder. When Kasie's tumor returned in February 2013, their family once again had to pull together, and now Kasie is back to driving and recently graduated with her bachelor's degree in business administration.

She's not back at work yet, but hopes to find a career soon using her new degree. Robert works at a local bank, is a full-time student, and the entire family works on their auction business on weekends.

"We've had to go through things that even a lot of people 50 years married haven't had to deal with, and every day we still struggle with things that either I can do or he can do," Kasie said. "If I can't do it, he's my strength, but if he's down, then I've got to pick it up."

Every day Kasie and Robert think about the friends they've lost, and even have their photos on the wall of their living room in remembrance. The fact that they made it through such a difficult time in their marriage serves as a reminder that, indeed, "we can do hard things," Kasie said.

smaue@semissourian.com

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