Tyson & Danielle Davis

Tyson & Danielle Davis are one of those couples you adore and admire from the moment you meet them. They are high-school sweethearts who have now been married for almost seven years. Their struggles with infertility have strengthened them as a couple, along with motivating Danielle to start her website, Today's the Best Day. These two know how to keep romance and love alive in their marriage, and their tips on intimacy are some of our favorites. 

Quick Facts
Years Married: 6.5
Kids: 1 daughter (2 years old)
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Occupations: Danielle is a stay-at-home mom and the owner and founder of Todays the Best Day - a website dedicated to enriching the lives of women everywhere! Tyson is in school studying finance and he also works at a financial firm. At night he helps Danielle with Today’s the Best Day.
Hobbies/Interests: We are big movie buffs. We love going to the park. Most of our time is spent with our daughter. We like sports. Tyson plays the guitar. Danielle sings. And Danielle loves shopping.
Favorite Flavor of Ice Cream: Danielle - Mint Chocolate Chip - there is NOTHING better! I could eat it all day, everyday!  Tyson - Cookie Dough. Absolutely.
Website: Todays the Best Day

Q. How did you two meet?

T: We are high school sweethearts. We have been together for as long as I can remember!

D: Tyson & I both grew up in Las Vegas. We met in our freshman year Biology class. He thought I was a bit crazy, obnoxious and loud, while he was kind of quiet. Eventually we actually became friends, through mutual friends, and we started hanging out! We never thought we would be in the same “group.” And then the story gets a little crazy!  

I had a crush on him, and he was not really interested in me. But one day, Tyson was in a really bad ATV accident and he hit his head. He literally lost his memory for a little while! That was when I swooped in. I made some cookies and went to visit him shortly after he got home.

After I left, he asked his mom who I was! He didn’t even remember me! Which actually worked for my benefit. He didn’t remember that he thought I was a bit crazy, obnoxious, and loud  - he thought I was actually cute! Just a few weeks later we went on our first date {while he was still on crutches from his accident} and we have been together ever since! We always joke that he had to have the accident in order to open his eyes to like me!

Q. How did Today’s the Best Day come to be?

D: It’s actually pretty cool! We struggled with infertility for many years, before we got our miracle girl. We love her, she is our little best friend! Through infertility, I had a personal blog, where I would write about our treatments and diagnosis. It was during my sixth months of bed-rest, while being pregnant, that I realized how much I loved to write! I am SUCH a people person and writing was my way of talking to friends, family and even strangers, when I had nowhere to go! 

After becoming a mom, I saw that there were so many negative attitudes about motherhood in the world! In fact, we were at the park one day and someone mentioned to me something about how they didn’t love being a mom. They didn’t know what I had been through to become a mom, so it kind of hurt me a little bit! 

I came home and I was determined to do something about this motherhood thing! I want moms EVERYWHERE to know what a blessing it is to be a mom, and how important this role is! I just started this little blog called Today’s The Best Day, because as women, I believe we really can make EVERY day, the BEST day for ourselves, our marriages, and our children! I threw an article out there and then another. One thing led to another and it has taken off SUPER quickly, and it’s been a really huge blessing in our lives. 

The Little Things

Q. Will you share with us some of the little things you do together, or for each other, that nurture your marriage? 

D: We text and call. A lot. Like ALL day, EVERY day! If I go 30 minutes without hearing from him, I’m like, “Hello?! Where are you?!” … Is that normal? {haha}

T: Acts of service is my love language, and I love having a clean house. So something that Danielle does for me is she will have the house perfectly clean when I get home, and that makes me feel great knowing that she worked hard to have it clean for me. She’ll send me pictures saying, “This is what it looked like before!” to show me how hard she has worked.

D: You know how it is with little kids. It really takes a lot of effort to keep your house clean! So, he is right! I even send him pictures when it is done, so that by the time he gets home and it isn’t clean and organized anymore, he at least knows that it was clean at one point. Even if it was only clean for 12 seconds.

My love language is quality time, so I love it when Tyson makes time to be with me. I love when we make time to put away phones and computers and to just be together. It makes a big difference.

Date Night

Q. What specific ways has continued dating in marriage nurtured your marriage? Why do you feel dating is so vital in nurturing a marriage?

D: Dating is important in helping to keep your love and friendship alive and new! It is always super important to have that refreshing date night and to have some fun! We don’t want to be that “old married couple” that doesn’t do anything together. We always like to make dating a priority! In fact, I hope he still takes me out on dates when we are 90!

T: You have probably heard of the seven-year-itch. A lot of our friends are getting there, and their marriages are drifting a bit - they aren’t as strong as they used to be. Dating is so important in staying close to each other. It helps us remember that “WE,” matter.

Q. What does date night look like for you guys? How do you make it work?

D: We try and have a weekly date night - Friday night is date night. It doesn’t always work out that way, and it has been harder since we had our daughter, but we try and make it happen. We usually switch off planning it, which has worked really well. I love Asian food and he loves Mexican, so when it is our turn to plan the date, we can either plan what we love, or be thoughtful and plan what they love. If we didn’t switch it up and take turns choosing, we would be at Chipotle every single Friday night.

Q. What has been your favorite date you have been on together?

D: My favorite was an all-day date we had - an A to Z date. We took a piece of paper and we wrote down things that we wanted to do - from A to Z - literally every single letter! For example, B was “bowling,” and G was “golf,” and then we took the whole day and we went and did those things! We took pictures along the way and just had a great time. It is definitely something I will always remember! 

T: Danielle loves the Bachelor so one night, I knew she needed a break, so my parents watched our daughter overnight and I set it up just like the Fantasy Suite Night. 

D: Oh my gosh! THAT was the best night! He even wrote the letter just like Chris Harrison does on the show, and he gave me a rose!  

T: I took her to dinner and then we stayed the night in a hotel. It was a fun staycation - every couple needs one of those!

Q. Danielle, how did that make you feel, when he planned that for you?

D: It made me feel SO great to know that he knows me and knows that I love the Bachelor! He pays attention to my favorite things and that means a lot to me. I loved it.

Intimacy

Q. What does it mean to you to have an intimate relationship with your spouse?

D: Knowing everything about a person - their struggles, their weaknesses, their strengths. It means being able to truly be best friends. To share everything with someone. To be vulnerable and let someone see you as you really are. It means you stick together through good times and bad.

T: It’s important to be able to be myself - thinking of the Bachelor, for instance - no cameras, no fake stuff, just the ability to be myself. Raw. She is the one person who truly knows who I am.

Q. What does emotional intimacy look like to you?

T: Emotional intimacy is being able to read each other, and know how someone is feeling, or what is going on in their day. It’s being in tune with each other. It’s knowing the cues and the needs of the other person.

D: Going through everything together and letting those things strengthen you. You also don’t think about communication a lot when you think of intimacy, but it is so important to be able to communicate, to talk about everything, and to talk about physical intimacy as well.

T: I love that we can be open with each other and talk about everything. I think a lot of guys get in trouble with that, they turn to external sources like the internet instead of being honest with their wives. But we’re able to talk comfortably about everything, and that really is necessary to having a healthy marriage.

Q. What other tips on intimacy help nurture your marriage?

T: One thing we started doing was that we realized that our intimacy was getting a little stale, so we decided to liven it up a bit. It’s important for me to have something to look forward to. 

D: We decided to plan out days of the week that we would each be in charge of making that night fun, fresh and new. When you are in charge, you get to plan a fun, intimate night. And then we take turns on who is planning and initiating it. 

T: It is really fun knowing that one night a week, I don’t have to worry about anything and I can be excited about a fun night ahead. 

Values to Live By

Q. We would love for you to take a moment and brag about your spouse. What do you love about each other? What characteristics or traits does your spouse have that nurture your marriage? 

D: I can think of one word - supportive. Tyson has always been super supportive. We met in high school, so we have almost been together over ten years! Through thick and thin he has been by my side. When we were going through our struggles with infertility, he was right there with me! When I didn’t want to do fertility treatments anymore, I couldn’t handle it mentally, he was okay and always had faith in us. He said, “Okay, we’ll take a break,” when he knew I needed one...desperately. And he held my hand and pushed me to become better when I was ready to do the treatments again.

THEN after becoming a mom, and I decided to leave my successful career to be a stay-at-home mom, he was super supportive. And when I decided to start Todays the Best Day, to help mothers see the good in their days, and he was there. He is SO supportive, and that is the thing I appreciate the most about him. He has always been there for me. To listen to me. To be my best friend.

T: Ah, that was nice, thanks. For Danielle, I’ll have to say her gift to see the good. She is such an outgoing person, and I am an introvert. I’ll get super stressed with work or school, and when I come home, she is the person that makes me smile. She makes every day the best day (kind of corny, but it’s true). She is so good with people and can make friends with anyone. She is super positive and expressive, and I love that about her.

Routines & Rituals

Q. What things do you do day-to-day that keep you connected?

D: We text. A lot.  And I call Tyson like seven times in a half hour some days! I just want to call him and tell him EVERYTHING! As soon as something happens, I have to call my best friend! Don’t you?!

T: I get a play-by-play. She’ll call and say, “I am washing the dishes.” Then she’ll call and say, “I’m putting the dishes away…”

D: Hello - those are important things you need to take note of! {haha!}

Q. Tyson, how does that make you feel that Danielle calls you first, before her mom or friend?

T: I love knowing I’m her best friend. It feels good knowing she wants to call me first and share those things with me.

Q. Do you have any special places, things you say to each other, or other mini-traditions that are unique to your marriage?

T: That’s funny you bring that up, I have something I always call Danielle, and people give me a hard time for it, but I call her “Dude.”

D: Yeah, he’ll text me and say, “I love you, Dude.” To me it is normal - he has always called me that! But when a friend reads or hears him call me that, they always question or look at me confused. 

Q. Do you have any routines/rituals around special occasions like anniversaries, Valentine’s Day, birthdays, etc? 

D: We have the cutest anniversary tradition ever - it’s my favorite thing! We have this box upstairs and it has six napkins in it. Every year for our anniversary we take a napkin from where we ate and we sit during dinner and write on it our “top ten memories from the year.” It’s super fun to reminisce and have the most important events in our life together written on napkins. It is also fun to see where we ate in years past! In the beginning of our marriage we ate at fancy, expensive restaurants and I am pretty sure if you looked in the box, you would see our most recent napkin is from Chipotle! It is going to be SO FUN in fifty years to look back at all of those napkins and all of our memories.

T: That has been a great tradition. For birthdays we usually do typical things - like breakfast in bed and going out to eat at our favorite restaurants. 

D: I love to shop, so for the past few years I have told Tyson I don’t want presents, I just want the Saturday before my birthday to shop all day and go out to lunch with him. Shopping, food, and Tyson = my favorite things. 

Conflict Resolution

Q. What specific suggestions can you share that have helped you work through challenges that have come up in marriage?

D: We got some great advice when we got married. The advice was this idea of when you feel like a change needs to be made in marriage, don’t think about trying to change your spouse, work on changing yourself. That has been super helpful. It’s so easy to see the negative things about our spouses and to think, “If only they changed.” When I have those thoughts, I then look inward and think, “Hmm...maybe I’m the one who needs to change.”

T: I echo that.

Q. How do you talk about hard things, or tough issues where you don’t see eye to eye?

D: You mean some couples don’t see eye-to-eye? {haha! just kidding!} Listening is HUGE! I love to talk, obviously, and I can just go-go-go. It’s so important to sit back, listen, and truly try and hear (with your ears and your mind) what the other person is saying. It’s so easy to want to think about what you are going to say next, but then you aren’t really, truly listening. Try and see things from the other person’s perspective and understand why they view things the way they do.

T: One thing her dad told me once, when I asked him how he and his wife did it, was that there are times and seasons. And we are in the season of parenting, and so it’s easy for me to be in “parent-mode,” and to start to talk to Danielle as a parent, rather than as a spouse. It’s been important for me to realize that I can’t talk to her like that, with the authority I might with our daughter. That has been helpful.  

Q. How have apologies and forgiveness nurtured your marriage?

D: Apologies mean a lot. It isn’t easy to admit you were wrong, and to say you’re sorry, but it makes a big difference.

T: Danielle has trained me that it isn’t just about saying, “I’m sorry.” It’s about saying, “I’m sorry. I was wrong. This is how I will make it right. It won’t happen again.” It’s hard enough to say you’re sorry, and to mean, and then to add all the rest, but Danielle will prompt me. When I say, “I’m sorry,” she’ll say, “And…?” It’s been good for me.  

Q. What are some of the greatest challenges you have faced in your marriage and how have you overcome them? How has your marriage been nurtured in the process? 

T: Obviously, infertility has been the greatest challenge we have faced in our marriage. And it has been something really hard. In the beginning, it was facing the fact that there was a challenge we couldn’t do anything about. Most challenges in marriage you can look inward and realize that you can change, but this time we had to just deal with it. We had to be okay with the fact that we may never have kids, and that it would just be us, and we had to work through that. And I realized that I had to see things from Danielle’s perspective. She got a bit depressed, and that was something I didn’t know how to really help her with, and help her come out of. It took time. And this is a challenge we will always struggle with. And through it all, we really have grown closer together. 

D: We were super blessed to have our sweet daughter, but the thought of wanting another naturally reminds us of the fact that we may never be able to have another and that our infertility struggles are still there. Having our website has been a great outlet for me because I now have a mission to help moms recognize what a privilege it is to have children and to raise them! Whether you have one miracle baby or you have seven kids, it’s important to remember YOU are a mom and you are SO important, no matter how many kids you have. And that has helped us get through one of our biggest challenges in our marriage - it is a project we work on together and we have learned a lot about team work through it! 

Q. What principles/practical suggestions have helped you, as a couple, manage your finances?

D: You are looking at the finance guru right here, so I’ll just turn the time over to him. 

T: You see, Danielle loves to shop. She loves to spend... and I like to see that money staying in our savings account. 

D: Oh! This is huge...have an allowance. That literally saved our marriage! 

T: We decided, early on, that we would each have a certain amount of money from each paycheck to do whatever we wanted with. 

D: It can be as little as $10 or $20, whatever you can afford. It makes a huge difference. I knew I could get that shirt if I wanted to, or go to lunch with my girlfriends without worrying about breaking the bank. I’ve shared this idea with a lot of other women, and they always come back to me saying it has worked wonders in their lives.

T: And it helps you stay within a budget. I would recommend using Mint.com, an app for tracking your finances. It is great, because if Danielle is at the grocery store, she can look at her Mint app and know exactly how much she has left to spend. Also, Dave Ramsey has some great stuff as well. 

Q. How has working through conflict together nurtured your marriage?

D: It has brought us closer together and strengthened our friendship. 

T: It has helped us be aware of the fact that we are in this together, forever. We have decided that we are going to work through these things and make it work. 

Final Question

Q. You are still married. What is your secret to a happy marriage?

D: Stick together. Hold each other’s hand and just keep going. Hard things are going to happen...bad things are going to happen... but if you just hold onto each other and keep on trekking, you’re going to make it.

T: Fun, friendship, and intimacy. That’s what it’s all about.

D: I agree! You HAVE to have fun! Don’t let things get boring or stale. Be each other’s VERY best friend! And of course, never be “too busy” for the other person. And always make time for some love. ;)