Couple’s relationship survives ups and downs

The first time Pete and Marty Walsh drove through Nevada, they were not impressed.

“We had a Rand McNally Road Atlas we were using to navigate around the country,” Marty said. “We made little notes about the places on it. On the Nevada page, there was just one big word, ‘UGH!’ across the whole page.”

The pair had driven across the state on U.S. Highway 50, dubbed “the loneliest road in America” in a Life magazine article.

“At the time, I just saw it as barren and empty,” Pete said. “I grew up in Ireland, and all the mountains there are green and covered with life. After being here a few years, I saw those mountains with different eyes. I’d say now that naked and raw is a better way of saying it. You can see billions of years of history on those mountains, and then you’ve got Vegas, where everything is new below them.”

Before moving to Las Vegas in 1999, the Walshes hadn’t lived anywhere for more than a few years. They longed to see places they hadn’t been. When they arrived here, they ended up setting down the deepest roots they’d ever had, buying a home, setting up the Trifecta Gallery and helping transform the 18b Arts District.

Now, they’re pulling up stakes again and heading back to the country farmland where Pete’s family has lived for generations.

“We’ve said every year, ‘Is this the year we go back?’ and it never was,” Pete said. “This year, we thought, if we don’t do it now, we might never, so we’re going there, and we’re building our little dream house.”

The couple met in Martha’s Vineyard, where Marty had moved to start a deli with a friend while Pete way plying his skills as a carpenter.

“We met at a restaurant and went on a date the next night,” Marty said. “I was very impressed that he was such a gentleman.”

They both thought of it as a summer romance, but when Pete was called back home to Ireland because of an illness in the family, he found he couldn’t stop thinking about Marty.

“They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I guess that’s the case,” Pete said. “Maybe we wouldn’t have stayed together if I hadn’t gone home, but when I came back, we got pretty serious.”

He proposed almost by accident, within hours of deciding to ask the big question. He never got around to figuring out some fancy way to do it. He just popped the question while they were walking down the street.

The couple married on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts and lived in Martha’s Vineyard for eight years, with a lot of side trips to visit other places, including the long road trip that took them through Nevada the first time.

“We did a trip around the states in a Volkswagen Bus,” Pete said. “We went 22,000 miles and went through 46 states in a hippie van.”

Their trips often led to places they didn’t expect. After spending the holidays with Marty’s parents in Louisville, Ky., they headed south to spend the winter somewhere warm.

“We were thinking St. Thomas or the Virgin Islands — someplace like that,” Pete said. “We stopped at a youth hostel in Georgia and ended up running the place.”

The hostel was managed by the owner’s son, who was called to the Peace Corps about the time the Walshes showed up. They were hired to manage the place and lived that winter in a treehouse on 90 acres of Georgia forest.

Later, they planned to visit Timbuktu, just to say they had, but Marty fell ill while they were in Paris, so Pete drove her back to his family’s property in Ireland to recover.

“We stayed for a week, and that turned into another and then another,” Marty said. “Before we knew it, we’d been there eight years.”

Pete and Marty came to Las Vegas to get in on the building boom, but Marty’s art and gallery soon became the center of the couple’s lives. Pete helped Marty renovate the gallery, and they ran it together, with Marty as the bold public face, choosing art, nurturing artists and bringing in notable speakers, while Pete quietly held things together in the background.

The marriage has not been free of difficulties. For a time, Pete found more time for drinking than just about anything else, but six years ago, he turned that around.

“It was a hard thing,” Marty said. “There wasn’t anything I could do but let Pete work it out and keep things running and find happiness in other things, but it all worked out.”

The pair have packed up their gallery, tied up some loose ends and figured out when to make their move. In the meantime, they’re each working out the plans for their new living spaces separately, and then they plan to look at what each other has come up with and combine it into a working whole.

“I want to live sustainably and simply,” Marty said. “We’re going to have a big greenhouse that will also be our kitchen and living space.”

The basic idea is already agreed on, but they’re working out some of the details.

“We’ll have a little living space, a separate building on wheels inside the greenhouse,” Pete said. “I think we’ll probably have one of those Japanese sleeping drawers for when guests come to visit.”

Marty raised an eyebrow.

“A drawer?” she said. “We’re going to put our guests in a drawer? This is the first I’ve heard of this. I’m going to have to hear more about this drawer thing.”

The Walshes have at least a few more months to work out “the drawer thing” as they trim down their belongings, say their farewells and prepare to head back across the ocean. They’ll keep in touch with their friends in Las Vegas and keep an eye on the local art scene.

Marty believes the scene is poised to move on to its next evolution. She feels that Pete’s description of the Nevada landscape is an apt one of what they’re leaving behind.

“Naked and raw — that’s a good way of putting it,” she said. “I think that’s kind of a metaphor for the whole state and the arts district. It’s open and exposed and ready to grow.”

Contact East Valley View reporter F. Andrew Taylor at ataylor@viewnews.com or 702-380-4532.