Good Neighbor Podcast: Frisco

EP 396: Commitment, Curiosity, And The Covenant That Outlasts Feelings

• Sophia Yvette

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0:00 | 12:19

What makes Dick Ivey with 24K Gold Marriage.org a good neighbor?

 Dick believes love lasts not because of spark, but because of skill. In this episode, we sit down with the marriage coach behind 24K Gold Marriage.org to explore the practices that keep relationships steady through every season, including assertive listening, daily kindness, and a covenant mindset rooted in commitment. Alongside his wife, Barb, Dick shares how their own blended family journey led them to learn from top marriage educators, test best practices in real life, and create a weekend intensive that helps couples rebuild trust and forward momentum.

Dick breaks down the “five goods” myth of looks good, feels good, smells good, sounds good, and tastes good, and explains why chemistry alone cannot sustain a marriage. You will hear how their Friday to Sunday intensive teaches couples a structured way to listen with curiosity, reflect feelings accurately, and confirm understanding before responding. This single shift ends the tandem monologues that quietly fuel resentment and replaces them with true connection. We also explore the other anchor of their work, a servant’s heart expressed through one intentional act of kindness each day. Small gestures, practiced consistently, build a reservoir of goodwill that steadies a relationship when stress hits.

We also map out who 24K Gold Marriage.org serves, from newly married couples still gathering questions, to stable partnerships ready to grow, to couples on the brink who want one last meaningful attempt. Most arrive through therapist referrals or word of mouth, a reflection of real results. Beyond intensives, Dick shares weekly relationship blogs and near daily prayers that blend wisdom, faith, and practical action. His core message reframes the idea of soulmates. They are not found. They are formed through choices, skills, and shared covenant over time.

If you are ready to move beyond hope alone and practice what actually works, this conversation offers clarity, encouragement, and tools you can use right away.

To learn more about 24K Gold Marriage.org go to:
 https://24kgoldmarriage.org/

24K Gold Marriage.org

214-668-2980

SPEAKER_00:

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Sophia Yvette.

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. Are you in need of a marriage coach? Well, one may be closer than you think. Today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, Dick Ivey, with 24kgoldmarriage.org. Dick, how are you today?

SPEAKER_02:

I'm older than I've ever been, but I've never been better.

SPEAKER_01:

Fantastic. Now we are excited to learn all about your business today. Tell us a little bit about your company.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, Barb and I are a blended family, so we have some divorce in our background. And when we got married almost 38 years ago now, uh, we began to discover not long after we'd been married that we were we were importing some of the same stuff that had gotten us in trouble before. And we're pretty smart rats. We've we're highly educated, we've had great corporate careers, and so we we decided that there must be something that we didn't know that we needed to go find out. So we began to assemble a list of experts in the field of relationship and marriage education. And uh it wasn't long before we figured out that there were some things that nobody ever bothered to teach us. And so we began to drink from the fire hose until we gathered up that kind of information and and then we decided we would pick up best practices from a bunch of them and cobble them together, and then we would get about the business of trying to help others understand what it was what it took to make relationships work and last forever. And we've been doing that for a long time.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow. Now, would you say you can verify that those techniques definitely work from your own experience?

SPEAKER_02:

We can, and we have, and in fact, um, over the years that we've been doing this, more than 30, I don't remember exactly how many years now, but uh we keep a record of the people that we have served over all this time, and to our knowledge, nobody who has come and done, and it's an intensive weekend that we do in our home, and we keep couples from Friday afternoon until sometime Sunday afternoon, and then we send them home with a covenant agreement of things they need to do together, and if they come and do the weekend, and and then they go home and practice what we have taught them religiously for at least 12 months, to our knowledge, no couple that has done that has ever lost their marriage.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow. Now, switching gears here for a second, uh, what is the biggest myth or misconception when it comes to your industry and what it takes to keep couples together?

SPEAKER_02:

Boy, uh Sophia, that's the biggest issue is that we live under a false flag in our culture. And the biggest one of those is what I call the five goods. If you find somebody that looks good, feels good, smells good, sounds good, and tastes good, oh, that must be my soulmate. And so we we use that uh that that sort of uh romantic stage of life as the as the the determinant on on who we're going to be in relationship and how it ought to be forever. And the truth is the new always wears off in relationships, and all relationships go through a series of stages. Some some go a couple of stages in and then they just quit and start over. You know, they said, Well, you must not have been Mr. Wright or Ms. Wright, you must have been Mr. Wright now or Ms. Wright Now. And so what I need to do is go choose another one, and that doesn't work because you keep drawing into relationships all of the same stuff that caused you to fail in the first place, and so uh the other piece of this puzzle that that we don't teach is is is how to do assertive listening. Couples just don't learn how to do that. We're not nobody's teaching that. The church isn't doing it, the school's not doing it, homes are not doing it, institutions of higher learning are not doing it. And so we just cast couples adrift with with the assumption that the question that they need to ask is, what's in it for me? When in truth, the question that every couple needs to ask each other is how can I serve you better?

SPEAKER_01:

I love that. I love that. Now, I certainly do have more questions to ask you. Sure, but we know marketing is the heart of every business. So if you can give us a broader idea on who exactly your target customers or audience are, and how do you attract them today?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, there are three different uh segments of the population that we help. We help those who are just getting started. They're not really very good candidates for what to do because they have all of the all of the answers that they just don't have all the questions yet. And so we ask many of them that we help to get started. Come back in about 18 months when you've got some scar tissue and let us help you then. The the the middle group are these are people who have a pretty good relationship, they just like to make it better. And then the final group, and this is the biggest group of those we help, and that's those who have already fallen on hard times, uh, they're at each other's throats, they may have, they may be contemplating divorce, they may have already divorced and and are going to give it one more shot. But we can take troubled marriages and teach them these skills and show them how they work, and and then they just show up. We have a website that we that we draw people to, but almost everybody that comes to us either comes from a therapist who recommends them to come to us, or because it's word of mouth who's somebody who's been one of our clients and they've recommended somebody else to come.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow. So have you and your wife ever thought about having your own podcast for the business before?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh, you know, we we've thought about that and we get so busy with other stuff, we just haven't we haven't made a commitment to do that. But I do I do publish two things every week. I I publish a prayer every morning from Tuesday through Sunday, and then on Monday I put I publish a blog on relationship and marriage education.

SPEAKER_01:

What was this morning's prayer?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, this one was uh I'm writing the new ones for this weekend. So I have to go back and and look, but mostly they are things about uh I I do um I pick out uh a topic, uh, I I write the prayer, and then I have a scripture verse that goes with it, and then I then I tag it with uh uh a piece of music. And uh today I wrote one because we have some problems with one of our grandchildren, and it'll be out this next week. And just just about asking God's blessings and care upon them. Uh we have we have some that are that are terribly ill, and we've got some that are out of control, and you know, grandparents don't always get an opportunity to do much about that, but the best thing that we can do for them is in in addition to offering ourselves is to pray over them all the time.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, amen to that. Now, for our couples or our listeners who may be newly married or married for a while, what piece of advice would you like to leave them with today?

SPEAKER_02:

Every couple that I know needs to find somebody that can teach them how to uh communicate effectively, and that's how to listen assertively so that they learn to listen with curiosity to understand and not to respond. Because so many couples get into a tandem monologue where one of them is talking and the other one's not listening, they're thinking about what I'm going to say when you give me a chance, and it just escalates off the charts, and it's not productive, and and it is a learned skill. And so once that's once you get that done, where couples can know you can be heard and understood and cared about, and you can get changes in behavior in a in a communication exercise, then they're in position to uh uh uh embrace the other bookend of what we teach, and that is how to have a servant's heart. And that's why learning how to say, How can I serve you best is such an important part. And we do that by helping them learn how to give each other random acts of kindness all day. And we we teach an exercise that requires them to do at least one random act of kindness every day. So if we can communicate effectively, learning how to listen with curiosity to understand, and then develop the bookend, uh random acts of kindness, answering the question, how can I serve you best? Uh they go home and learn how to do that. We don't have to worry about them anymore.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow, I always thought when you find the right person, it's already in your heart to do random acts of kindness.

SPEAKER_02:

You just you bring up a great point there. I don't think anybody finds a soulmate, they are created, and so whenever you find somebody that matches those five goods I told you about a while ago, you have all of the information you need to begin to form a relationship that will last you as long as you live. But you have to learn the skills that goes with it, and then you develop that that soulmate relationship over time as you go through the the bumps and the bruises and the good times and the bad together, and you forge a commitment that says one of us has to die in order to get out of this. Let's figure out how to do it where it's successful for both of us.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, a covenant. And I will say I do believe in soulmates, but I also believe you have to be that person, not just want to be with that person. That's the difference.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, that's part of the false flag that says, you know, if you get all this other stuff, everything else will work out, and it doesn't. And we're not being taught anywhere in our society how to do this right, and it just drives me nuts.

SPEAKER_01:

And a final question for you today: where can our listeners go to learn more about 24kgmarriage.org?

SPEAKER_02:

You know, my phone, uh, I I'll take phone calls from anybody. It's 214 668 2980. Or my email is dick at dick ivy. The last name is I V E Y, Dick at Dick Ivy.com. Or you can go to the website, which is http uh s colon two backslashes www.24kgoldmarriage.org. And you can connect with us there.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, Dick, I really appreciate you being on the show today. We wish you and your business the best moving forward.

SPEAKER_02:

You are terrific. Thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gmpfrisco.com. That's gmpfrisco.com or call four six nine two two one nine three four five.