Living Forward, Understanding Backward: How Faith, Marriage and Hardship Shaped John and Margaret Kelly's Lives
- Sheryl Tirol
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
Success, John Kelly will tell you, makes faith easy to ignore. He and his wife, Margaret, spent years doing exactly that, building careers, raising a family and going to Mass on Sundays, while God waited somewhere further down the list. Then life intervened in ways they could not have planned for, and the question they had never thought to ask became impossible to avoid: if everything can be taken away, what are you actually standing on?
The couple has been married for 43 years and has two adult married sons and four grandchildren. John built and ran his own private businesses. Margaret rose to Chief Executive Officer of worldwide operations at RE/MAX, one of the largest real estate companies in the world. From the outside, it looked like a storybook life.
“You live your life looking forward,” Margaret Kelly said, “but you understand it looking backward.”
For her husband John, the view from where they stand now, together, makes all the difference.
Different Starting Points, One Foundation
John grew up going to Mass once a week. Margaret grew up praying the weekly Rosary with her family. The youngest of six children in a devoutly Polish/Irish Catholic family, she attended a Latin Mass, was confirmed in fourth grade and was formed in a household where faith was a way of life, not an obligation. John’s upbringing was quieter.
“No Bible, Rosary, nothing,” he said.
When they met at Walsh College in Troy, Michigan, her family roots mattered to him more than he could fully articulate.
“Those Catholic roots were very important to me,” he recalled.
They married and had to learn how to meet in the middle. What they could not have known then is that the middle would become the foundation for everything.
The Cost of Success
For a time, faith was secondary in their lives. Two careers. Two young children. Sundays at Mass, mostly, but not much beyond that.
“Our faith took the back seat because of life, not intentional,” Margaret said. “We didn’t stop believing in God. It’s just, ‘I’ll get to him later.’”
John is candid about what filled the space.
“It doesn’t matter what size stage you are on, if you’re the big kahuna on that stage, it gets pretty intoxicating,” he explained. “And it’s really easy to put God last.”
23 Months
Then life intervened in a way neither of them could have anticipated.
“In 23 months, I had breast cancer, a mastectomy, my father passed away, [who was her hero,] cancer again, a hysterectomy and back surgery,” Margaret recalled. “I really felt like, in a big way, it was God hitting us upside the head, saying, ‘Pay attention to me!’”
They did not blame God. They went back to him.
“We went back to our faith and prayer and relying on God, and it got us through it,” she explained. “And we said we will not let go of it again.”
It is a passage that echoes Romans 5:3-5: that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character and character hope.
The Call at 4 a.m.
Those trials would prove fruitful, not only deepening their faith but also allowing them to help others in ways they never anticipated. Not long after Margaret recovered and returned to work, she was promoted to president and CEO of worldwide operations at RE/MAX. It was in this role that God would put her leadership to the test.
“I received an anonymous suicide note in the intercompany mail,” she remembered. “I wrote an email to the whole company that said, ‘Whoever wrote me the letter, here’s my phone number. Give me a call.’”
Hours later, before the sun came up, Margaret’s phone rang, the employee who had tried to take her own life, calling the one person she believed had suffered enough to understand.
A few years later, Margaret presented that employee with her 10-Year Service Award.
“She walked across the stage, and we just hugged each other, because we knew what it was,” she said. “All of those tough times may lead to something incredibly positive. And that’s God’s will.”
Marriage First
Marriage, Margaret says plainly, is not easy. The couple nearly walked away from theirs. Two careers pulling in different directions led them to a reckoning, and a rule they have kept ever since: marriage first. When their youngest entered high school, John began thinking ahead.
“How do we fortify our relationship so that when our kids are gone, we have something in common besides our kids?” he remembered asking.
They started working on it that day.
“We protect our marriage, and we put it first,” Margaret explained, “because at one point we almost lost it. We’re servants to each other.”
The same intentionality extends to their faith. Together they pray a daily Rosary, serve on Catholic boards and bring what each is learning back to the other.
“We have to have a strong faith between us,” Margaret said, “in order to do any of it.”
Witness Without Words
For the Kellys, sharing their faith has never meant knocking on doors.
“We are going to use the platforms that we have to set a role model and be an example,” John said, “so people say, ‘I need to find some of that in my own life that’s missing.’”
Small acts carry weight. Together they pray a daily Rosary and are completing the Nine First Friday and Five First Saturday devotions. At restaurants, they say grace.
“We’ve had people at the table next to us say, ‘That is so nice to see,’” Margaret said.
“You never know who’s observing your witness and when,” John added.
When someone in their circle expresses interest in the faith, Margaret’s instinct is to connect them with the right people. Recently, a friend she had quietly guided toward a Catholic couple for accompaniment decided to enter the Church.
“If you’re expressing interest in the Catholic faith,” she said, “then God is tugging on your heart, or the Blessed Mother is. And you’ve got to open yourself up.”
Their involvement extends beyond their home as well. Margaret recently became chair of the Daniels Fund Board of Directors and has served on the boards of FOCUS, Amazing Parish and the Denver Chapter of Legatus. John sits on the boards of Emmaus Catholic Hospice and John Paul the Great Catholic High School in Denver. The way the Kellys see it, the skills they spent decades building were never really theirs to keep. Now they are putting them to work for something bigger, for the Church, and they are doing it as a team.
Faith and Flourishing
Asked what they wish someone had told them earlier, the Kellys answer differently but arrive at the same place: faith and flourishing go together rather than being opposed to each other.
For Margaret, it comes back to the why.
“Growing up, I learned what to do in my faith, but I never learned why I did it,” she explained. “Now that I understand the why, it’s so incredible and so beautiful. It’s 2,000 years of tradition.”
For John, the answer is simpler.
“It doesn’t have to be hard,” he said. “It’s as easy as surrounding yourself with people of faith.”
A trip to Italy last year with friends who prayed the Rosary every day convinced them both. For nearly three weeks, they joined in. When they came home, they kept going. They have not missed a day since. In fact, they make sure to start their day with a Rosary.
John can’t help but think back to the years he spent awake at two in the morning, worrying about making payroll, sales and inventory, unable to trust that things would work out.
“I realized my faith was weak because I didn’t believe everything was going to work out. I was lacking hope, which comes from God,” he said.
“Surrounding yourself with those key people, spiritual directors, people who will help you be a better Catholic, I wish I would have had that much earlier in my life.”
For the Kellys, the path from hardship to flourishing was not a straight line. But it was never without direction. In recent years, John and Margaret have consecrated themselves, their marriage and everything to the Blessed Virgin Mary, a decision they say has changed their lives in ways they are still discovering. She guides them. She protects them. And in a life marked by real suffering, she has been a steady source of hope and peace.
For a couple who once put God last, there is something fitting about entrusting it all to his mother — what more could they ask for?
