The Kelly family

It took Joe Kelly nearly 20 years to come full-circle. After leaving his native Spokane in 1989, the Gonzaga graduate knocked around Europe during the fall of the Berlin Wall. With the end of the Cold War looming, he obtained one of the first visas for travel throughout the Soviet Union, and ventured into Mongolia and China before ending up in Seattle, where he lived with his wife and four boys until last fall.

“I literally circled the globe and came back to live just a few feet from where I was born,” says the Spokane real estate broker, explaining that the South Hill home he bought with his wife, Mary, is two houses down from the one in which he was raised in the 1960s.

The couple met at Gonzaga University in the late 1980s, though upon graduation they went their separate ways – Joe to Europe and Mary to Niger on a Peace Corps assignment. Joe says he “somehow ended up on the streets of Seattle,” where he ran into Mary at an Indigo Girls concert.

“I thought it would impress her that I had backstage passes,” he quips, adding, “we would have dated anyway.”

They later married and had four kids – Cedar James, 13, Liam, 6, Aidan, 5, and Finn, 2 – before swapping their 6,000 square-foot home on a private ravine in Seattle’s Wedgwood neighborhood for life in Spokane.

Why Spokane

“It was now or never,” says Joe, while Mary adds, “We heard such good things about the area in terms of raising kids.”

In addition to the good schools, the Kellys also appreciate the close proximity to outdoor activities – particularly skiing for their boys.

Another drawing card is Joe’s parents’ house on Lake Pend Oreille, which they had visited on occasion while living in Seattle.

“Now we can use it all the time,” says Mary, 40, a real estate agent who helps run JK Realty, the brokerage Joe started last year.

Real estate

From a business standpoint, the couple says they see potential for positive growth in the Spokane area.

“In 1989, every one of our peers wanted out of Spokane,” says Joe, 40. “But as we’ve watched it grow up, it’s become an area that’s really on the up-swing, and we want to be a part of that.”

The Kellys say they chose the South Hill because of its proximity to downtown. Although the couple envisioned settling in one of Spokane’s historic homes, instead they bought a 1968 six-bedroom, four-bath split-level with roughly 5,200 square feet.

Although the house maintains much of its original condition, the couple plans to replace the dated, off-white carpet with wood flooring. They also hope to revamp a spacious backyard patio.

“The house has great bones,” Joe says, adding that they plan to stay true to its mid-century feel with a funky, modern style.

Settling in

While the couple isn’t crazy about mid-century modern architecture, Mary says such homes usually offer a spacious floor plan conducive to raising kids. Still, “if someone said we’d be in a split-level, we would have laughed,” she says. “But we seem to end up living in them.”