Couples make their relationships work while living apart in the tough economy

In a tight economy, jobs can be hard to come by. But, as always, so is true love.

When Kevin and Natalie Furness were engaged a year ago, they knew it was unlikely they would live together after their Au gust 2009 wedding. Now, six months into their marriage, Natalie, 25, lives with her parents in Amana, and works at AEGON in Cedar Rapids while her husband, Kevin, 27, goes to school 175 miles away at Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine in Kirksville, Mo.

Since he started medical school more than two years ago, Natalie has tried several times to get a job closer to him, but nothing has panned out.

“The job market down there isn't great,” Natalie Furness says. “I was looking for anything that had benefits.” Because Kevin Furness is a student, the couple relies on her job for health insurance.

Video by Jim Slosiarek

“We agreed that she wasn't going to just quit her job when we got married,” Kevin Furness says.“She could get a job for three months and have that on her resume or keep the one she had.” The couple has traded off visiting each other since Kevin moved to Missouri.

Since May, he has been making the three-hour drive to Iowa nearly every weekend.

Their weekends are usually a whirlwind, visiting friends and family and attending events like weddings and reunions.

They're not alone. In 2006, before the highest unemployment rate we've seen in a generation, the Census Bureau found that 3.6 million married Americans (not including separated couples) lived apart from their spouses.

More recently, last year, Worldwide ERC, the association for work-force mobility, reported that three-fourths of the 174 relocation agents surveyed had helped at least one commuter marriage in 2007, a 53 percent increase since 2003.

George and Lorena Thullen, of Cedar Rapids, are another of those couples.

George, 61, works for WD Associates, a company that hires him out as a nuclear consultant around the country. His current assignment is in Monticello, Minn. During the week, he lives in a rented house. On the weekend he drives five hours to Cedar Rapids to see his family.

It's an arrangement they've had to accept since George took early retirement at Duane Arnold Energy Center in Palo, he and his wife, Lorena, 55, realized they needed income to put food on the table for their two sons.

“There was no way we could make it financially. He still had to work,” Lorena Thullen says.

“There's only so many nuclear plants in the country. We knew he could get a station job, but (moving) would be really tough on the kids.” So, the Thullens made the decision to keep their primary residence in Cedar Rapids, and Lorena would stay at home with their two boys, Isaac and Peter.

“Somebody needs to stay at home and make sure our teenage sons don't go amok,” she says.

Children also played a factor in Tom and Ann Madden Rice decision to live miles apart.

When Ann Madden Rice, 52, was offered the top job at the California hospital in 2006, the couple's youngest daughter, Charlotte, was a junior at Iowa City West High School.

“We decided I would stay here with her,” says Tom Rice, 53.

“She's now a sophomore at Iowa State, and I'm still here.” He is associate provost for faculty at University of Iowa and she is chief executive officer at University of California Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. She was chief operating officer at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

“We both live a mile from Interstate 80 - just 1,800 miles apart,” he says.

He could have found work in the Sacramento area, but not as a tenured professor and he wouldn't have asked his wife to sacrifice her career either.

“You don't just get to be president of a hospital every day,” he says.

So, the Rices, who will celebrate their 30th anniversary in March, see each other about once every one or two months, usually “around vacation time or when she is on a business trip,” he says.

It can be lonely, he says, but they have found a way to work around the separation.

“Just because you live apart doesn't mean you care about your career more than your marriage,” Rice says. “It takes a strong marriage to do this. In some ways, it's stronger now.” Lorena Thullen says the time apart from her husband has taught her a lot about her marriage as well.

“We had a really strong marriage to begin with,” she says. “I've always been in love with my husband and him with me. I had no idea the depth of love you could experience having what we've gone through the past three years.” They stay connected during the week, through Yahoo Messenger, a computer program that allows them to have a conversation without the hassle of a phone and the benefit of seeing each other via webcam.

“It's been wonderful to be able to talk to him on a nightly basis,” she says. “It's more interactive than a cell phone.” But technology is no substitute for having someone at home waiting for you.

During the week, the Furness' talk to each other several times a day on cell phones. But dropped calls and bad reception are frustrating.

“It's annoying when we don't have good reception and can't understand each other,” Natalie Furness says. “If I have a stressful day at work, I wish I could go home to him.” She will get that wish in June The couple plans to move to Springfield, Mo., in June after Kevin's graduation.

The Thullens too can “see the light at the end of the tunnel,” says Lorena.

When their son Peter, 17, graduates from college, they plan to move to Missouri where they have purchased land.

The Rices, on the other hand, don't know when their careers will enable them to live together again, but the goal is to be together, Rice says.

“We have no idea where we will end up,” he says. “We're in it for the long haul.”