He’s a greedy strip mall developer from the big city. She’s the girl next door who refuses to sell her late grandmother’s book store on the town square. Somehow, they overcome their differences and fall in love.
It sounds nice. But even dewy-eyed Hallmark Channel devotees would concede that it bears no resemblance to an actual romance. Real life doesn’t follow the dictates of formula storytelling.
Or does it?
A deep dive into the story of Chattanooga natives Abbey and Matt McDonald suggests reality might have more in common with fiction than snobby critics would care to admit.
For example, a teaser of a Hallmark production starring Abbey and Matt could read like this:
She’s a residential Realtor who cares about her clients. He’s the son of a land man who taught him to treat customers with respect. Watch them grow to love each other during a brief courtship and then marry and have two amazing kids.
While accurate, this version of Abbey and Matt’s story lacks the drama that attracts viewers. Some tweaking would be necessary, but since Abbey and Matt are actual people, it should stick to the facts:
She’s a 22-year-old college graduate who’s living her best single life. He has one marriage behind him, two kids in another city and is approaching 40 fast. Watch how he reacts when she finally tells him her age.
Now that’s a synopsis that can pull in big numbers on a Friday night. But will viewers be able to resist Googling the end of the movie to learn if Abbey and Matt make it?
Meet cute
Spoiler alert: Abbey and Matt wind up together.
That’s certainly the impression they give as they take seats at the conference table in the lobby of The Group Real Estate Brokerage on Broad Street, where they work together as Realtors. After Abbey sits down at the head of the table and Matt settles in to her left, they appear to subconsciously turn their chairs so they face each other.
While sweet, this makes it easy for Matt to catch Abbey’s corrections to his side of the story. For example, after he says he’s 42, he readily hears her chime in, “You’re a little off.” (He’s 43.)
The couple begin with what film critic Roger Ebert called the “meet cute,” a moment in a movie when two implausible people bump into one another while going about their lives and stop long enough for Cupid’s bow to find its mark twice.
Or, in the case of Abbey and Matt, just once at first blush.
They would have missed their appointment with destiny if Abbey’s friends in the downtown condominium complex where she was living hadn’t insisted she accompany them to the 3 Sisters Bluegrass Festival, which was taking place near the Riverwalk – and which she was loath to attend due to an aversion to hillbilly music.
As luck would have it, these friends were Matt’s clients. And they had been warming her up to him.
“They kept talking about their Realtor, Matt. They loved their Realtor, Matt. And as we were walking to 3 Sisters, they said, ‘Oh my gosh, here’s our Realtor, Matt!’” Abbey recalls of the 2021 encounter.
Abbey had no trouble remembering Matt’s name as they chatted casually, fiddles and mandolins providing the soundtrack for their exchange. After they parted, Abbey says she didn’t give Matt a second thought. He was handsome and interesting, she adds, but she wasn’t looking for “a 40-year-old with kids.”
Matt, however, was twitterpated. (Google Disney’s “Bambi.”)
“Bells and whistles were going off in my head,” he grins. “Abbey was gorgeous. And something inside me was saying, ‘Pay attention.’ I knew this was a big moment – which was strange. That never happens to me.”
Matt obtained Abbey’s phone number from one of his clients and then texted her the next day. “He said, ‘I’d like to take you to Hennen’s this week. Are you available? Hope you’re having a banner day,’” Abbey recalls. “I thought, ‘Banner day? Who says that? What does that even mean?’”
Abbey might have scoffed at Matt’s goofy millennial jargon – but she remembers it. More importantly, she agreed to go out with him. However, neither of them could predict how their first date would go.
Laying a foundation
The seeds of romance can grow in unlikely soil. Love might cross the tracks to the wrong side of town, for instance, or overcome a language barrier.
Despite the differences in their ages and life experiences, Abbey and Matt spoke a common tongue – real estate. And as unromantic a topic as home sales might be for a date, it gave them enough conversational fodder for a three-course meal.
It also provided a way for them to learn about each others past.
Abbey is a child of the Riverview community and a graduate of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where she earned a marketing degree. She crossed paths with real estate when she was 18 and interning for Allison Lee, a family friend and Chattanooga Realtor.
“I ran signs for Allison and shadowed her,” Abbey remembers. “She suggested I earn a real estate license, so I became a Realtor at 18 and sold a couple listings. When I became a junior at UTC, I figured it was time to become serious about what I wanted to do. Joining a team felt like my best option, so I connected with Wendy Dixon at Keller Williams.”
Abbey wet her feet as a showings agent and then progressed to buyer’s agent. With each step forward, she discovered she was not just interested in real estate but also had a passion for it.
“I love what I do,” she smiles.
Matt began working in real estate at a tender age, if one counts the times he accompanied his father to the sale of a parcel of land as the start of his career. His dad, John McDonald, owned about 100 vacant properties in Hamilton County and often took Matt with him to boost his credibility.
“Dad said I helped him look legitimate and less like a shyster,” Matt laughs. “I watched him sign hundreds of deals on the hood of a car.”
Matt also earned a marketing degree from a Tennessee university, although he attended classes in Knoxville rather than Chattanooga. However, his postgraduate life saw him tending bar instead of working in his chosen field. Matt says he was good at making drinks and liked it, but he often wondered if he could do more.
“I was thinking, ‘If I can sell double chocolate lava cake, why can’t I sell a walk-in closet?’ I felt like I had potential beyond scotch and soda.”
Then came the day in 2006 when John was injured and needed Matt to take over the family business, which had started with his grandfather, prolific Hamilton County developer Joe McDonald. Matt acquiesced and then became a Realtor in 2007 to gain access to the information he needed to do his job.
Abbey and Matt covered all of this territory and more while they dined. As they talked shop, they also discovered they shared a common ethic: focusing on the needs of their clients rather than the monetary value of each buyer or seller.
“It takes personal experience to understand the life of a Realtor,” Abbey muses. “We bonded over putting our clients first. We both believe that if you do a good job for people and treat them like family, then the money will follow.”
Matt nods in agreement. “We’re not focused on money; we don’t see a client as having a specific cash value. We just do the best job we can for them and trust that everything else will follow.”
Abbey and Matt followed their first outing with more dates. During each one, real estate dominated their conversation.
“It was a bonding thing for us,” Matt says. “We especially liked strategizing together. One of us would say, ‘I have a client with this issue,” and the other one would say, ‘Have you tried this?’ Caring about our clients was important for our development as a couple.”
As Abbey and Matt soon learned, navigating their first obstacle was also vital to their growth as a twosome.
Robbing the cradle?
Like clockwork, every Hallmark movie throws a wrench into the works near the end of its running time. More often than not, these hurdles rise out of a misunderstanding, as though the network weans its writers on episodes of “Three’s Company.”
Matt accepts the blame for the confusion that led Abbey to break up with him. It began with him asking her an innocuous question:
“Do you remember Food King? I worked there back in the day.”
When Abbey said no, Matt felt compelled to ask something he had not thought to bring up during their dates: “How old are you?”
“When I said I was 22, Matt said, ‘Holy crap, I’m robbing the cradle,’” Abbey recalls.
“It took me by surprise,” Matt says in self-defense. “She seemed like an old soul and carried herself like someone older than she is. I thought she was in her early thirties.”
Abbey was not fond of Matt’s reaction, she says, and later broke up with him via text. Clearly, she’d forgotten his Obi-Wan Kenobi-like ability to use text messages to sway her thoughts.
“I hate to hear that and I’m sorry if I upset you,” he replied. “But I’m still going to keep an eye out for all you do, and I’m still going to be your biggest fan.”
“He made leaving tough,” Abbey admits. “I was showing a house, and as we were walking through the kitchen, I was thinking, ‘Did I make a mistake?’ Matt and I were too far in for me to just wave him off.”
“I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel,” Matt explains. “I enjoyed the fun side of dating Abbey, but I also admired her as a person. There was a genuine attraction.”
Hoping to reconcile, Matt invited Abby to walk their dogs across the bridges that span the Tennessee River. During their stroll, he told her about a dream he’d had the previous night.
“Matt said, ‘You called me and said you were kidding about the breakup. I was thrilled,’” Abbey recounts. “Matt doesn’t lie – that’s a great quality about him – so I believed him. That’s when we became official.”
If Hallmark were to make a movie about Abbey and Matt’s courtship, this would be a perfect spot for a whirlwind montage that carries the story forward. It could include clips of Matt bonding with Abbey’s family during Thanksgiving, with Abbey meeting Matt’s daughters in Atlanta, and with the sales of her condo and his residence in Hixson.
The montage could then dissolve to a Realtor handing them the keys to their first home together. Finally, it would conclude with her finding the engagement ring where he’d hidden it, with their wedding at her grandfather’s house in July 2022, and with birth of their first child, Cannon, the following January.
“Our life was like the scene in ‘Raising Arizona’ (after Nic Cage and Holly Hunter get married),” Matt says, referring to the 1987 Cohen Brothers comedy. “Those were our salad days. We had immense pride and joy in being married. It was new. And it was fun.”
And then it was real.
Working together
Every Hallmark movie ends with a kiss and swell of cheery music as the lovers begin their happily ever after. No one sees what happens next because it could dampen the ending. But as the McDonalds demonstrated after tying the knot, hitting a few bumps in the road doesn’t necessarily toss the prince and princess out of their carriage.
Abbey and Matt’s salad days ended when his mother suffered a debilitating stroke six months after they married. The crisis heralded an intense year of medical and end-of-life care.
“Watching a parent slide out was difficult,” Matt says. “It tested us. And that made us stronger.”
Adding to their load during this demanding time, Abbey and Matt learned they were going to be parents again. It was, as he says, “a lot to handle at once,” but that didn’t stop them from taking a step forward that seemed to be in the cards ever since he’d told her to have a banner day: they combined their businesses and began to work as a team.
Abbey had given Matt a taste of what she’s like on the other end of a deal when she brought him a buyer for his house in Hixson. “She beat me up,” he acknowledges. “She’s a tough negotiator. But that’s what we do for our clients. I understood that.”
Although Matt says he was convinced he and Abbey would make a great team, he never pushed the issue because it was her decision to make.
“I felt loyal to Wendy after everything she’d done for me, so I stayed with her after Matt and I married,” Abbey says. “But when we had our second child, Graham, I believed God said, ‘It’s time for you to work together.’”
As Abbey and Matt joined forces, they discovered their skills complemented one another. She’s strong in procedures, contracts and negotiations, and has a knack for resuscitating deals that are on life support; his years of watching his father shake hands taught him how to put clients at ease and explain their battles in a way that makes them seem already won. Their diverse toolsets dovetailed nicely, Matt says.
“I tend to have good banter and I won’t let the paperwork get in the way of doing business. Abbey can bring a dying deal to the closing table and miraculously stitch it back together. That’s not to say either of us lack the other skills, but it’s nice for each of us to be a pillar of strength in a particular area.”
“Once Matt and I learned that our skill sets are complementary, we told prospective clients that they’d be getting two Realtors for the price of one,” Abbey adds. “We’d use our combined strengths to help them achieve their goals.”
One skill Abbey and Matt say they both share is an ability to resolve a disagreement without allowing even an intense discussion to escalate into an argument. This suggests a level of relational maturity they only hinted at while dating.
“We strategize all day, every day, and even in bed at night,” Abbey reveals. “Matt will say, ‘I feel like we should do this,’ and I’ll say, “No, I think we should do this,” and then we’ll work through why each of us feels the way we do. Eventually, we’ll come together.”
“Abbey is usually right,” Matt says without a hint of irony. “But there are definite synergies in us discussing things. What usually comes out of those conversations is the best plan for our client.”
Although the McDonalds are rarely off the clock, they do make room for salad from time to time.
Life together
Now that Abbey and Matt have a few years of marriage under their belt and are building a family, perhaps they could shoot a TV reality series as a sequel to their as-yet unpitched Hallmark movie:
Join the McDonalds of Chattanooga as they navigate the ups and downs of life as easily as they ride the waves of Chickamauga Lake in their ski boat. This week, Matt relaxes at the grill as Abbey strikes a deal for a buyer while chasing down the ever-scampish Cannon and Graham.
The series could focus on how Abbey and Matt’s mutual commitment as parents surpasses even their devotion to their work.
“We’re pretty invested in being parents and raising our littles right,” mom says. “We’re not perfect but we strive to be present. Parenting is probably the hardest job we’ll have.”
The cameras could follow Abbey to Junior League, where she’s served as the sponsor chair, and accompany Matt to meetings of the Chattanooga Historic Zoning Commission, to which Mayor Tim Kelley appointed him.
An episode detailing an especially frenzied week could conclude with them worshipping on a Sunday morning at First-Centenary United Methodist, which Abbey says resets them for the coming week.
Above all, the series could tell the ongoing story of two individuals who met implausibly and, due in no small part to their shared experiences as Realtors, are now living their best lives together.
“We’re very grateful for real estate,” Abbey says. “It allows us to be married and work together and provide a good life for our kids.”