For Martissa Spencer, patience is definitely a virtue. When Martissa met her now-husband Mike in September 1991, she was busy having her first real romance with the newly returned missionary she had dated in high school. Martissa had plans to serve a mission of her own and was surprised to find out that her boyfriend wasn’t willing to wait. The relationship ended. “I couldn’t change my course,” Martissa says. “I felt very strongly about serving a mission.”
As Martissa’s home teacher, Mike observed her emotional breakup firsthand. As they got to know each other, he wasn’t sure yet if she was the girl for him, but “he was sufficiently intrigued to play it cool,” says Martissa. The two went on a few official dates but mostly became friends, attending various activities together and seeing each other in the Tanner Building between accounting classes. Eight months after meeting, Martissa turned in her mission papers and was called to the Hungary Budapest Mission to serve in Romania, where a mission would soon be organized. Mike came to see her off and continued chatting with her in the MTC, where he worked as a teacher. Martissa didn’t have a romance in mind at that time. “I was so excited to finally be on my mission, and I was going to Romania, which wasn’t even a mission!” she says. “I was a pioneer missionary!”
The two wrote regularly throughout that exciting time—with Martissa coming to anticipate the next letter more and more. When she was reunited with her family after her mission, Martissa talked about Mike so much that her mom told her, “You go back to BYU, and you marry Mike!” That’s exactly what happened.
Two years and eight months after meeting Martissa, Mike proposed. They were married 8 July 1994 in the Manti Utah temple. They each received BS and MAcc degrees in 1995 and moved to Denver, where Martissa worked for Coopers and Lybrand, and Mike for American Management Systems. Today, Mike is with the same company—now called CGI—designing and coding accounting software. They have four children, ages seven to sixteen. Their family takes lots of road trips and recently learned how to ski.
Catch more Marriott love stories in “Joint Ventures” in the Winter 2014 issue.
