Tim and Joy Downs have co-authored two books on conflict resolution in marriage: Fight Fair and One of Us Must be Crazy and I’m Pretty Sure It’s You. Tim is also a corporate speaker, communication trainer, and co-host of the weekly Communication Guys podcast, which can be heard on Spotify & Apple Podcasts. The Downs are graduates of Indiana University, where Joy received a degree in Journalism and Tim received a degree in Fine Arts. The Downs have three grown children.
Hey, it’s Mike Treen with Crawford Media Group and 670 KLTT. Today I’m joined by Tim and Joy Downs. We’re talking about A Weekend to Remember coming to the Colorado area. And Tim and Joy, thanks for taking the time with us.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, you’re welcome. It’s our privilege.
SPEAKER 03 :
Glad to be with you. So we have A Weekend to Remember coming to the Broadmoor, Colorado Springs area. Within our KLTT listening audience, a ton of people down in Colorado Springs, Pueblo, up to the Denver area that would love to go. It’s February 28th through March 2nd. And I want to start. Tim and Joy, give us a little info on you two and the work you’ve done with Family Life and outside of Family Life, too, if it’s relevant.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, it’s been our privilege to speak at Weekend to Remember Getaways for 40 years now. We like to tell people we started when we were just children, but that’s not exactly true.
SPEAKER 02 :
It’s pretty close.
SPEAKER 01 :
But it’s a wonderful group. It’s grown exponentially over the years. Now more than a million and a half couples have attended the Weekend to Remember Getaway. So we now have conferences we do in 75 locations all over the United States. Amazing.
SPEAKER 02 :
We’re often paired with, or most of the time paired with, another couple. And so we’re kind of the oldies. for the most part. And we’re often paired with a younger couple. So we kind of do the spectrum of marriage. So that’s kind of fun. That’s fun for us.
SPEAKER 03 :
Tim and Joy, if someone hasn’t been to a weekend, remember, what’s that like? What’s the experience like for the person that’s a first time attendee?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I think it’s a surprise for people to realize these conferences are large. These are not just small group get-togethers. In fact, the conference at the Broadmoor will have more than 1,000 people attending. And the beauty of that is you can get lost there. You can make the weekend about just the two of you. You’re not meeting in a small group with other couples. You get a chance to just make the weekend about yourself. So it’s always a nice hotel. There is no nicer hotel than the Broadmoor. I would say anywhere in the United States is our favorite property. And the conference itself is excellent. The material is wonderful. We’ve been doing these conferences, Family Life has, for close to 50 years. And it’s fine-tuned, and it’s an outstanding experience.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right. They keep updating the material. They add more videos and clips and graphics and things. So that makes it fun and up-to-date, too.
SPEAKER 03 :
Joy, what would you say is a very compelling reason Perhaps something that people have even told you, hey, I really came because this happened in my life or this happened in my marriage.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I think people come for all different reasons. We’ve had couples come and they say this is our last-ditch effort. If we don’t get help here, you know, we’re done. We have the divorce papers drawn up. And by the end of the weekend, they come back to us and say we have hope. We see what we’ve been doing wrong, and this is a starting point for us to change. And then we have other couples that have been married just for a month, and they’re deeply in love, and they want to just invest in their marriage. And we feel like it’s just a wonderful reason to come and get away, because in marriage we do nothing. We tell this in our conference, but we drift toward isolation. You know, the distractions that we have, The busyness that we have, whether we have children or they’re grown, we have grandkids, work, all those things take us away from each other. And so we say, if you’re not working toward actively building into your marriage, you’re going to drift toward isolation. But you can come together and you can have that connection. And we call that oneness again. And it just gives couples a chance to look at each other. To actually, you know, take down their screens, talk to each other and say, you know, who are you and what’s important to you? And it really helps couples get on the same page again.
SPEAKER 03 :
We’re speaking with Tim and Joy Downs. We’re talking about Family Life’s Weekend to Remember. That’s coming to the Broadmoor, Colorado Springs. February 28th through March 2nd. And as Tim said, it’s a beautiful place. If you’ve never been to the Broadmoor, it is such a great place to get away with your spouse and have a chance to have a weekend to remember. And Tim, I’m going to ask you, what are some of the things that our listeners can expect to hear at a weekend to remember?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, we try to cover the gamut. We talk about the nature of marriage, as Joy was saying, about the fact that it’s something you need to work at if you want an excellent marriage. It’s a strange thing, Mike, but we expect to have to work to advance our careers or education or to stay physically fit, but we don’t expect to have to work on marriage. But if you want an outstanding marriage, it does require some work. So we’ll talk about the nature of marriage, and we also talk about a simple game plan for achieving oneness. We talk about improving your communication skills. We talk about how to resolve conflict, how to fight fair. We talk about improving sexual intimacy in marriage. So, boy, we cover a range of topics over the weekend. And I think an important thing to say, Mike, is it isn’t just about speakers talking to the audience. We carve out a lot of time for the couples to be able to get together and talk just to each other here. And that’s why we like to call it a weekend remember getaway. It’s a romantic getaway.
SPEAKER 03 :
Joy, do you think a lot of times it’s hard for couples to actually sit down and talk and have that time together?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. Yes. I mean, Tim and I have that trouble, too. I just think, you know, whatever stresses you have coming into your marriage, you could have a good marriage, but you could have other stressors come in or whatever. you know, children that are going astray, you know, just all kinds of different problems. And so it’s hard to carve out the time, first of all, to talk and then just to know even how to begin to talk, which is really helpful to go to Weekend to Remember because we give you some things to talk about. We give you kind of springboards of projects to do and to talk about the things that we’ve just been mentioning in the session, you know, whether it be about conflict or whether it be about communication and so you don’t have to just sit there like bumps on a log and think i don’t even know how to start this we give you kind of prompts to help you uh talk about the things that are hard yeah and the websites weekend to remember i want to mention that a couple different times in this interview pretty simple weekend to remember.com there’s a special hundred dollar off um
SPEAKER 03 :
Discount for KLTT listeners. Use that code getaway. So like a getaway, getaway to save $100 off the regular price for a couple’s registration, which is pretty fabulous, right? It is.
SPEAKER 01 :
It’s a good deal. And again, for a fabulous getaway at an outstanding hotel.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, it’s so pretty down there. And Joy, you talked about some of this already. What if somebody’s already attended a Weekend to Remember event?
SPEAKER 02 :
spouse uh two spouses and and they look at each other and say ah you know we’ve already been to a couple what do you say to that person yeah well we do have people that come back and what they tell us is you know the material sounds so different because we’re at a different point in our marriage or we have different things going on in our marriage and they will probably have different speakers at the weekend to remember that they attend because We try to switch up the speakers. There are 50 different speaker couples that travel all around the country. And so it’s likely that if you came to one getaway, you will hear different speakers at another getaway. And we all kind of just make the material our own. We tell our own illustrations and stories. And so you will hear a pretty different conference. The material, the outline is much the same, but, um, Our stories and everything are different, and it will hit you differently compared to the conference that you attended before.
SPEAKER 01 :
And we’ve had couples tell us they come every year on their anniversary just to use it as a kind of a tune-up. So apparently it does sound different each time, just like Joyce said. Yeah, I love that.
SPEAKER 03 :
I think you hit on it. It’s a different season. And as you go through these seasons, those questions hit a little differently or the things you need to talk about. Right. So do you find yourself ministering that weekend to remember sometimes?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, that’s our hope in whatever form that takes. We hope that we’re an encouragement. And hope is the big word there. We really want to give couples hope. We do believe that there is hope because God can be with us and show us things about ourselves and things about our spouse or about our children that we might not normally see. and we can have the hope that he’s with us. And a lot of couples come away thinking, I didn’t know that before, or I had forgotten about that, and now we know we have God’s power. So what else would you say, honey?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, we would say God has given us a very simple and very profound game plan to make marriage work. We think God invented marriage, so his original design is the most effective one there’s ever been. We try to tell people that we are all inherently spiritual beings. And sometimes the problem is we’re trying to conduct a marriage, leaving the spiritual dimension out. And once you wake up to that, you suddenly realize, like Joy was saying, you’ve got another power source that really will help to work towards the oneness that we all want.
SPEAKER 03 :
We’re speaking with Tim and Joy Downs, and we’re talking about the Weekend to Remember. Sorry, Joy. Walked on you there. It’s at the Broadmoor. Beautiful place. We’ve talked about that. Tim and Joy have been there, so they know. February 28th through March 2nd, Tim and Joy will be speaking there, and the website is weekendtoremember.com. Use the code GETAWAY to save $100 off the regular price for a couple’s registration. And Tim and Joy, we have just enough time, I think, to talk about each of you giving your favorite part of Weekend to Remember.
SPEAKER 01 :
I think my favorite part of it is simply looking out at a thousand people in the audience, just sitting two by two, nudging each other, laughing together and talking when we give them a project or give them a break to see people interacting. working through something that they needed to talk about, and just enjoying the beauty of the area and the chance to get away. That’s why we keep using that word. Mike, that’s why the coupon code is getaway, because the secret is when are you going to do this on your own at home with the distraction of life? Come and get together with us and get away and just have a wonderful, romantic weekend.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right. Uh, for me, I would think, I think, uh, Mike, that just looking out into the audience and there are many children represented with these couples as well. And so to see those couples unite again and think their legacy could be changed. And often we hear about that at the end of the conference, that they are going to make God at the center of their marriage and their family. And so we know that legacies can be changed and children can have parents that stay together. And they all see a model of marriage that they can have in their own marriage. And so that’s exciting for us. We hear about that at the end of the weekend. And so that motivates us each time. And I will say, too, we’re speaking with another couple, the Perrys, Mike and Wendy. And you will love them if you come. They’re a great couple and so much fun to hear.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, Tim and Joy, we’re blessed to know that you two are involved here. for a long time with Weekend to Remember that you’ve been sowing into these husbands and wives, you know, these families, really, to the kids, have generational, really generational communication improved and different things in the marriage that are now going to be imparted on kids. And some of the kids that you guys have talked to the parents, well, now the kids are learning from Weekend to Remember. So pretty amazing stuff. Yeah, it’s weekend to remember dot com. Easy website to get to. The dates are February 28th through March 2nd at the Broadmoor. Use the code getaway to save one hundred dollars off a regular price couples registration. So family life is graciously agreed to that discount that gives you one hundred bucks off. That’s a lot. And Tim and Joy, we can’t wait to hear what couples tell us after they come.
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, well, thanks.
SPEAKER 01 :
We can’t wait to be there to see the Broadmoor again and to see all the outstanding people that we’ll have in the audience.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right. We always love to meet the couples and talk with them. It’s a great, great conference, and we love it. Love to be there at the getaway.
SPEAKER 03 :
So good. Well, KLTT listeners, you make sure and hunt down Tim and Joy and tell them you heard it on KLTT and perhaps I’ll even hear about your stories. So Tim and Joy, thanks so much. WeekendtoRemember.com and February 20th to March 2nd. Be there.
