WEST SALEM — Mike and Stacy Simmons have 23 years of married life as a chief piece of evidence.
Now they’re hoping to win the verdict for America’s Best Couple.
Voting for the 14 finalists ends Aug. 28 at 7 p.m. Pacific Time. The Simmons’ profile can be found on America’s Favorite Couple’s website.
The winning couple is crowned America’s Favorite Couple in a Variety Magazine advertorial and receives $20,000. The magazine feature includes a special photoshoot for the winning couple.
The competition is separated into 14 groupings, each of which contain 14 couples. The Simmons’ are second in their group, in their quest to reach the final round where voters will choose one of the remaining 14 couples.
Colossal, a professional fundraiser, is sponsoring the competition.
Stacy registered for the contest on a whim after she got an email about it. But she nor Mike thought their entry would move on past the first round.
The competition started at the end of June, and after the first round, 75% of couples who entered were eliminated.
In their profile, The Simmons’ said they would use the money to take their dream trip to Iceland and Norway.
But Mike said, “we are people of faith and that comes first,” so if God tells them to use the money for something else, they will.
The couple has been together for 27 years. They met in Wooster in 1999 while they were both working at the same company.
At the time, Stacy was going through a divorce and Mike was going through a break-up. Mike said they were opposites: Stacy was bubbly and outgoing, and he was unapproachable.
But he recognized they were both going through a hard time, and that they could meet on that common ground.
Eventually, the couple got married and moved to Shreve, Ohio, where they lived for 15 years. In that time, the couple rebuilt their relationship with God.
By 2013, Mike felt a calling to become a pastor. That same year, the couple decided to change their lives forever and adopt four children.
They finalized the adoption in May of 2014 and closed on a house in West Salem, on June 8, 2014. The same year, Mike started his own church, New Beginnings Crossroads Fellowship, in West Salem in an old schoolhouse.
Mike helped create a food pantry at the church in 2017, which served over 1,000 families a month across 16 counties. In 2019, he created a Christmas toy distribution program that served over 400 children.
Eventually those programs shut down after the church eventually relocated to its current location at 9690 North Elyria Road.
Stacy and Mike also go live on TikTok almost every night to take prayer requests. Through TikTok, they have met countless people, including a woman who Mike baptized in The Gulf of Mexico.
“God is always first,” Stacy said.
Mike said the competition is not about winning.
“Maybe our story can bring hope into someone else’s life,” he said.
The Simmons’ hope to inspire people to not give up on their faith, their marriage and their kids. And if just one person is inspired by their story, then they won, Mike said.