The text wasn’t long. It wasn’t riveting. It wasn’t even something Olivia Harris had been contemplating for very long. It simply floated the idea of opening a Pilates studio in East Lansing, Michigan.
Darien Harris, Olivia’s husband, stared at his phone in confusion, fully convinced she was joking. They had stable jobs, a toddler deep in the tantrum era and zero plans to become entrepreneurs. But that one message flipped the trajectory of their entire family.
“I've always had this itch to open a business,” Olivia said. “I just have never really landed on what feels purposeful to me and what could be successful. But there’s this missing piece in East Lansing that I wanted to bring. And I thought if we did this right, we could fill that and make a profitable business out of it.”
East Lansing has always been a big piece of the Harrises’ lives. Both are graduates of Michigan State - Olivia a former MSU cheerleader and assistant cheer coach, Darien a member of the winningest senior class in MSU football history. They met in 2018 during Olivia’s senior year and Darien’s final year of graduate school and have been supporting each other’s dreams ever since.
Olivia and Darien moved back to their college town in February 2020 after six months in Detroit, when Darien was hired as the first-ever director of player engagement for Michigan State football. He spent two years in that role before eventually working his way up to assistant athletic director of business development and NIL strategy. Olivia, meanwhile, was rising at Concentra Urgent Care, starting as a facilities coordinator in July 2018, and progressing into management less than a year later.
“We were stable in that sense,” Darien said. “So the idea of, ‘Well, let's branch off into entrepreneurship,’ which is a risk at the end of the day, was certainly a scary thought.”
But Darien also recognized something else: while he was living out his dream working with his alma mater and over 700 MSU athletes, he didn’t see the same spark in his wife. Olivia felt it too. Her job, though secure, “wasn’t fueling her soul.”
So, when the text arrived, Darien looked around the room for hidden cameras. But once he realized Olivia was serious, and after conversations with mentors, financial advisors and their families, Darien found himself sharing Olivia’s dream too.
“I've always gone after my dreams and, God-willing, have accomplished everything I've wanted to,” Darien said. “So I asked myself, ‘What would be the reason not to do this?’ And I couldn’t come up with one. There was nothing in my head saying this isn’t going to work. It was more like: this has to work.”
Everything accelerated from there: Olivia’s STOTT Pilates certification, the small business loan, signing a lease. One step rolled into the next, and suddenly the couple who once said they’d never become entrepreneurs were all in.
The grand opening of Recharged Pilates was set for June 1, 2025, and the excitement surrounding Grand River was palpable. Wanting one last stretch of family time before pouring every ounce of energy into the grand opening, Olivia and Darien decided to take their daughter, Naomi, to her first concert.
They’d already been in Chicago for a couple of days when, just hours before the show, Darien’s phone rang. On the other end was Joe Schoen, general manager of the New York Giants, offering Darien the position of director of player engagement. The job was his if he wanted it.
Olivia was in a Pilates class nearby; Naomi was playing in the hotel room. And Darien was suddenly holding a career-defining decision, just 17 days before their new business opened.
“We had all this focus on opening the studio and all this focus on Olivia and her path, and now all of a sudden, boom, it pivots back to Darien and what he's got going on,” Darien said. “Which honestly is unfair at the end of the day.”
Darien told Schoen he needed the weekend to decide. But after speaking with mentors, his parents and Olivia, he called him back 30 minutes later. Darien was going to the NFL.
“The jobs in the NFL can pass you by,” Olivia said. “With how hard people work to get up into the NFL, for them to be calling Darien and seeking him out was huge. It was just one of those where you don’t pass [on] it. You don’t say no.”
What this meant for the Harrises’ living situation and what it meant for the studio would have to wait. Because family comes first for Olivia and Darien—and that meant throwing on their cowgirl boots for some “Cowboy Carter.”
Reality soon hit, however. The Harrises were not only two weeks from the grand opening of Recharged Pilates, but less than two weeks away from Darien relocating to New Jersey. It became a whirlwind of finding an apartment, booking babysitters and reworking almost every aspect of their lives.
“You never have to put your dream to the side just because you’ve become a mom or a ‘solo-parenting mom,’ as I like to say it in our house right now with Darien being gone,” Olivia said. “I would just tell myself, keep going. For every hard day, there's going to be two really great days.”
More than six months have gone by since the opening of Recharged Pilates and since Darien’s move to New Jersey on May 27, 2025. Olivia is in East Lansing with Naomi and a thriving business, and Darien is over halfway through his first season with the Giants.
Recharged Pilates has had over 1,200 clients come through the Grand River doors, and more than 1,100 classes have been taught between the nine Pilates and sculpt instructors. Olivia has been holding down the fort in East Lansing, acting as the face of a budding business and of her family, often on four hours of sleep.
When it comes to her daughter, Olivia wants Naomi to see her “work hard and do it all, and wear all the hats, and see that it's possible.” Olivia and Naomi have made multiple trips to New Jersey since the transition, and Darien has also been back to East Lansing.
“It’s indescribable,” Darien said about Olivia. “It truly defines what unconditional love means. That’s the only way I feel like you can function properly in a relationship and in a household. For us, we're always going to be doing something, we’re moving, shaking, busy people. I think everybody knows that about us. But we can’t do it without each other’s support.”
The Harrises are unsure how long this “long-distance” portion of their story will last before Olivia and Naomi are able to join Darien in New Jersey. They are fully sure that for however long it lasts, compromising their partner’s dreams is not an option. According to Darien, it’s necessary to be “passionate about your partner's passions, and you have to operate like the idea is yours, even if it's not.”
And that ethos certainly rings true for his relationship.
“ His dream of being in the NFL is my dream for him too, and it's my dream for us to be an NFL family,” Olivia said. “I would give that advice to anybody, especially anybody who is thinking, ‘is this my life partner?’ If you can't answer the question, ‘is their dream my dream?’ Then I think the answer to that is no.”
These days, life is a balancing act, but one the Harris family embraces wholeheartedly. Olivia has her spark back owning and teaching at Recharged Pilates and Darien is living out his dream in the NFL.
The chaos is real, but so is the joy. Every client who walks through the doors of Recharged and every touchdown scored on Sunday reminds Olivia and Darien that they are making it work. For them, success isn’t just measured in business growth or career achievements. It’s measured in love, in support and in the ability to chase their dreams without losing sight of each other.
“We're living the dream of dreams,” Darien said. “I call it the highest of the American dreams - working in the National Football League, America's sport, and being an entrepreneur, which is America's path. And we get to do both at the same time.”
