1KHO 631: Your Marriage is One-of-a-Kind | Dustin and Melissa Nickerson, How to be Married

The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast

Ginny Yurich

Parenting, Kids & Family

4.9 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dustin and Melissa Nickerson are hilarious and surprisingly profound about what it takes to stay married in this day and age. In this episode, they tell the story of getting married as teenagers, building a “big family small business,” and learning that no one hands you a rule book for a one-of-a-kind marriage. Dustin shares why most marriage advice fails when it turns into a formula, and why the real work is becoming a student of your person. Melissa adds some truths about midlife: the sandwich-generation pressure, kids launching, parents aging, and the blessing of a partner you can still laugh with when the stakes get high. Play, movement, and games show up as marriage glue. From backyard volleyball to made-up family games to their confession that hiking beats fancy date nights every time, they show what it looks like to stop performing “good marriage habits” and start doing what actually works for you. It’s tender, it’s funny, and it’s the kind of episode that makes you want to grab your spouse, get outside, and remember you’re on the same team. Check out Dustin’s book How to Be Married (to Melissa) their podcast Don’t Make Me Come Back There and Dustin’s stand-up tour dates Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside Podcast. My name is Ginny Urich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours
0:04.1	outside and I'm so excited today. Two fantastic guests. Dustin and Melissa Nickerson, welcome.
0:09.9	Thank you. Thanks for having us. Okay, you have your own podcast. It's called Don't Make Me Come Back There,
0:16.0	which is so great because it's family comedy, but that is like a line that is in everybody's family. Can you just give us a little bit of your background, your story, your comedian, you were a pastor at Mars Hill. Yeah. Which I loved in the book. You said something like, okay, you have a book. I haven't even said that. The book is called How to Be Married. And you are like, have fun Googling that. So you were a pastor. Now you're a comedian. You two work together. You run your business together. Give us a little quick backstory. And then also you have a podcast. Sure. Yeah. You want to go first? No, go for it. So we've been married 21 years.
0:55.6	Yeah.
0:56.2	We met in church youth group.
0:59.0	We were high schoolers.
1:00.0	She was at a different school, but we met in church youth group.
1:03.6	Got married at 19.
1:06.4	We were living up in Seattle at the time.
1:09.5	Yeah, I was an intern and then a youth pastor for on and off for like seven, eight years,
1:15.0	a few of them at Marse Hill.
1:16.8	We always say like we left before the crap hit the fan, but it was rising when we were like,
1:23.1	we're getting out of here.
1:25.2	We've lived down in San Diego with our family for the last like 15-ish
1:29.2	years or so though. Started stand-up down here was middle management at a rec center at the time.
1:37.7	Mel now does work at that rec center and teaches arts and fitness and a few other things
1:44.0	along the line.
1:46.2	We have an 18-year-old who's in college. We dropped them off this year, a 16-year-old,
1:51.4	an 11-year-old. I don't know. Yeah, we have a podcast called Don't Make Me Come Back
1:56.1	There. I always, let me call to the, I always, it it's not a mistake the book is called how to be
2:02.8	married and then in parentheses to melissa because i always want to make clear i'm not giving
	...

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