Christy Johnson was frustrated.

It was January of 2005 and she had been living in Ames hotels for weeks after accepting the coaching job for the ISU volleyball team, and she was sick of it. To make matters worse, she hadn’t seen her boyfriend, Joe Lynch, since she had arrived in Ames.

When she heard a knock on her hotel door, all that frustration was instantly replaced with excitement. Johnson knew it was Lynch coming to Ames for the first time. But when she opened the door, she got a little more than she expected.

There was Lynch, down on one knee, asking her to be his wife.

She said yes.

There began an unorthodox marriage: One that is more than just husband and wife, but also coach and assistant coach. Johnson quickly hired Lynch to be an assistant coach at Iowa State, realizing an idea that allowed their relationship to move to the next level.

“We had talked about working together a little bit, but it wasn’t until I came down to Iowa State to interview and got the job offer that it became a reality that we could work together,” Johnson said. “I think we decided right away that he would be an assistant here.”

The two met in 2003 through coaching circles. Lynch was coaching high school and club volleyball in Milwaukee, Wis., and Johnson was an assistant coach at the University of Wisconsin. Two of their mutual friends kept trying to set them up, and after enough prodding, they agreed. They both said, however, that their relationship wasn’t a storybook beginning.

“I was a little scared of Joe [Lynch] at first,” Johnson said with a laugh. “Just watching him at first – he is a pretty intimidating person to watch on the sideline. It took me a while to get to learn a lot about him more as a person than a coach.”

That sort of intensity is in contrast to Johnson and made for a rough start.

“Christy seemed just kind of shy and not very outgoing,” Lynch quickly added. “It was hard at first to really get to know her.”

It was meant to be, however, and on May 13, 2006, the couple was married – cementing a relationship that some of those close to them didn’t even realize existed.

Junior Mary Bisenius was a freshman when Johnson and Lynch came to Iowa State, didn’t know the two were engaged until months into the 2005 season. She noticed on a contact sheet that they lived at the same address but because of the distance they kept at practice, never put two and two together.

“People kept asking Joe about his fiancee, and I was like, ‘Who is he engaged to?,’ and everyone was like, ‘Christy,'” Bisenius said. “My famous line was ‘Oh, so that’s why they live together.'”

The couple has strived for that sort of subtlety. It is important to them that they keep a professional relationship at work.

“I think we are pretty conscientious about keeping a coach relationship with each other during the day,” Johnson said.

Keeping that professional environment has helped create a unified coaching environment. The team doesn’t have to worry about conflicts among the coaches and can concentrate solely on volleyball.

“I think there is just more staff cohesion,” Lynch said. “You can tell when some staffs don’t like working together, so it helps that you don’t see that.”

To the players, Johnson and Lynch are just coaches who happen to be married. Their marriage has never been something the team has focused on. For the most part, their relationship has been kept out of practice and has never been a distraction of any kind.

If anything, it has been a source of inspiration and goodwill.

“You would never know they were married unless someone told you,” said sophomore Kaylee Manns. “But it is also nice to see how two people, who share the same passion for the game, can come together and make a relationship work, not only through volleyball.”

The camaraderie their relationship brings to the program is an added bonus on the recruiting trail. Knowing that Johnson and Lynch will be on the staff together for a long time can help convince an apprehensive recruit, Lynch said.

“A lot of times when recruits come in, they are wondering how long a good assistant coach is going to be there, because they are going to look for another job at some point,” Lynch said. “We tell recruits they don’t have to worry about that.”

Occasionally, assistant coach Dawn Sullivan can be left out of the loop, despite the best efforts of the couple to include her. Lynch and Johnson said they spend so much time together that they inevitably talk about the team. Although they try to remember to include her, sometimes they just forget what they discussed with Sullivan and what they talked about at home.

The couple admitted that it can create a little confusion when they aren’t on the same page, but beyond that, there is very little divergence on the staff.

Johnson trusts her assistants and said she is comfortable with either one stepping in when they see something they need to address.

For Sullivan, it has never been an uncomfortable working environment, although she can sometimes be on the outside.

“You always have in your mind that they go home and talk all the time, but they do a good job of keeping me in the loop,” Sullivan said. “I don’t feel like it is a big difference at all.”

One worry Johnson had at the beginning of their relationship was that they might run out of things to talk about and get sick of each other.

She said they spend almost all day together and beyond volleyball, don’t have a lot going on.

“We don’t really have a lot of hobbies,” Johnson admitted.

So far, that hasn’t been a problem. Because there is so much going on with the team, they always can find something to talk about, even if it is volleyball-related. If the constant volleyball starts to feel overwhelming, they have also mastered the ability to find some alone time – even when they are together.

Sitting at their desks just a few feet apart, both Johnson and Lynch can go into their own little world. When they aren’t doing their separate work for the team, Lynch spends his time playing hearts or solitaire on his computer, but Johnson prefers a good book. It helps that neither minds being around the other all the time.

“It is a good way to spend a lot of time together,” Lynch said. “It is good to have a common interest that always keeps us together.”

And together they will stay, even if some people don’t quite understand the commitment of their spouse-coach relationship.

“I did have a friend ask me ‘What if Joe got a job offer at another Division I school, what would you guys do?'” Johnson said. “What, you think he would leave? It doesn’t work that way.”