The love story started at a summer resort in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. Holly was 13 years old. Barry was 14. The girl lived in Evanston in the early 1960s, the boy in unincorporated Glenview. A jukebox at the resort played songs, some by a new artist, Johnny Mathis.
The boy and the girl danced.
“He was tall, 5-foot-11,” Holly, 5-foot-7 at the time, recalls, her eyes twinkling. “He was a good dancer, fast song playing or a slow one, and the cologne he was wearing that night … Old Spice.
“I was a goner.”
They dated during their high school years and their college years. They got married on the day of their University of Illinois-Chicago graduation ceremony. Barry Kahan, an attorney, and Holly Kahan, a business owner, will celebrate their 49th wedding anniversary on June 18. Holly’s business, based in the Kahans’ home in Highland Park, is HollyBarry House, Ltd, of Chicago, a relationship marketing company that provides creative, meaningful gift items. She handles the orders of corporate clients and personal customers. Employees receive the gift items from bosses and colleagues. Friends and loved ones receive the gift items from friends and loved ones.
HollyBarry House’s mission statement: “Our commitment is for people to be acknowledged for the contribution they are to the lives of others.”
Holly Kahan considers music a gift. She considers a scent a gift. Both are lasting. Both drew her to a significant gift, Barry, decades ago. Lasting. The aromas of six buttermilk pancakes and three strips of bacon waft and intersect in front of her at a booth in the Walker Bros. Original Pancake House in her hometown. It is 11 days before Valentine’s Day, a day of love, of gift giving — often of the scrambling variety — in many countries.
“My business is a win-win-win situation,” Kahan, a former board member of the Northbrook Chamber of Commerce, says. “The recipient of a gift gets to feel special. The sender of the gift gets to fulfill a good intention. And I get to facilitate the gift-giving. Humans want and need to feel a connectedness, a relatedness, in their business lives and in their personal lives.”
Kahan reaches inside a white envelope and presents a plastic card, slightly bigger than a business card. Her company’s logo is on one side of the card. On the other side is a Maya Angelou quote, one of Kahan’s favorites, one that captures the spirit of HollyBarry House.
“I’ve learned,” the quote starts, “that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
A new board director of a nonprofit organization wanted to purchase gifts for her board members before her first meeting. She contacted HollyBarry House. The director sought to set a positive tone and express her appreciation, in a unique way, for the commitment of her board members. Holly Kahan brainstormed. The thoughtful aftermath of Kahan’s storm: a set of chrome figures, shaped like fortune cookies. Inside each decorative cookie was a message: “It is my good fortune to have you as a member of our board.” Each member read those words before agenda item No. 1 was addressed. Intended tone set. Time to get to work.
A company wanted to present more than flowers and a “Get Well” card to an employee who had recently undergone a cancer treatment. Kahan chose something warm and personal. Flowers perish; a warm and personal item endures.
A man wants to buy his best friend a birthday gift. The man has no idea what to buy. Enter Holly Kahan. She helps the man select an item that celebrates the occasion — and the relationship.
“I ask three questions before working for a client,” Kahan says. “ ‘What is the occasion? What is your budget? What do you know about the person?’ A big influence of mine has been Faith Popcorn, a futurist, a marketing futurist specifically. She predicted relationship marketing would be a marketing trend in the 1990s. Creating meaningful relationships with the special people in your life, business and personal, is important. It’s also important to reinforce those relationships.”
Kahan, mother of three and grandmother of seven, established HollyBarry House in 1995. It has survived three U.S. economy dips. Kahan takes pictures, all kind of pictures, when she escapes the rewards of her vocation. She snapped one of a mountain peak on the island of Moorea in French Polynesia. The peak appeared in the movie South Pacific. She snapped several during her walking tour in Australia. She likes to swim regularly at a health club, all of her questions and challenges usually answered and solved by the completion of her final lap. Her favorite venue for an early-morning power walk is Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
“I love walking around that beautiful place,” the first Homecoming Queen at the University of Illinois-Chicago says. “I like to get there at around 5:30 a.m., nobody else around. I especially like walking on sunny mornings. I also like to pretend I own the place.”
Her favorite place in the world is anywhere near where her husband happens to be at the moment. Holly celebrates their differences: Holly is a planner, an adventurer; Barry is low key, easy-going, spontaneous. They served as a presenting couple in the Chicago Jewish Marriage Encounter movement. Married couples, Holly contends, should be more aware of their inherent power of two. Holly remembers a night at home when temporary clutter, children’s toys scattered and dirty dishes awaiting attention, irked her. Barry defused the moment with a timely suggestion.
“He told me, ‘Let it go and sit down with me,’ ” Holly, eyes still twinkling, says. “Then he said, ‘Let’s watch TV and hold hands.’ He’s my rock, my spinal column.”
The toys got picked up and the dishes got cleaned after the Kahans’ impromptu in-house date.
Their Valentine’s Day plans this weekend will be simple and touching, the best kind. They will write a love letter to each other, Holly wielding a pen to compose hers, Barry tickling a computer keyboard to craft his.
“I’ll probably also rent a DVD for both of us to watch, one that he will love and I will hate,” Holly says.