Velvet Celebrity Digest

Fresh star stories with a cool online feel.

Actually, that brings me to the next question for Michael and Sherry. Did you two always want to go into construction? Was this something your father encouraged you to do?

Michael Jr.: Yeah, so my dad always says he had to bribe me to get into construction, and we have two different stories of how we got into construction personally, but I always thought I wanted to do something different. I wanted to do something on my own. And I wanted to be a firefighter when I was younger.

But when I started working for my dad between summers in high school at 14 years old, I loved it. And that was really as simple as it was, is that I started working with my hands and being able to build something and working hard, sweating to finish a project, and doing something different every day was really satisfying for me.

Sherry: Mine is similar because I absolutely did not want to work in construction. I don't think it's so much of not wanting to work in construction. It was definitely not wanting to do what my dad wanted me to do. I was more of a nomad. I was traveling. All I wanted to do was work odd jobs to make money so I could go and do anything I wanted.

So I used to like backpacking, and to me, work was work. I just needed to make money. It didn't matter. And my dad tried to continuously talk me into joining the construction crew, and I just adamantly refused for years. One being I was terribly shy, and two, I'm really bad at math.

So I was embarrassed about that kind of skillset. I finally agreed to join the crew when I was 21 years old. I said, "I'll give it a try," and went to New Orleans to build a house, and my dad was kind of like, "Hey, you get to travel and you get to help people. What do you think?"

So I joined the crew, and I think what really sealed the deal for me, was not only the satisfaction of learning that I can do what every other man can do, [but] I can learn construction. I can learn to read a measuring tape and do my math. And you just get to see what you can do with your bare hands. And the people you get to help are just phenomenal. I've never turned back, obviously.