When most people think about retirement, they look forward to relaxing and finally taking a break from years of work.

Kim and Carl Gearns are not most people. With long careers in computer and software engineering respectively, the Northville couple, in 2016, founded In the Mitten Productions, a youth theater and performing arts company based in Metro Detroit.

In July, they leased office and warehouse space in a building in Livonia, giving the youth theater and performing arts company its own official home. The new space allows them plenty of room to begin building sets for shows at The Hawk in Farmington Hills and at the Novi Civic Center, where In the Mitten Productions runs the two city’s youth theatre programs.

“This building is our next big step,” Kim Gearns said as she sat in the new space on Eight Mile Road. “We look at this as our retirement.”

The couple met more than 30 years ago at Burroughs, an engineering firm in Plymouth, and became friends as part of a tight-knit group of about 25 co-workers who often socialized outside of work. Carl was among the guests at Kim’s first wedding. When her marriage ended less than four years later, Carl had left Burroughs and moved to Arizona for another job.

He heard through the grapevine that Kim and her husband had divorced and called to see how she was doing. Kim said she asked Carl if he was ever planning on coming back to Michigan and, “He said, ‘I’d like to come back but only if I’m coming back to you.’”

And so, in a whirlwind, Carl moved back to Michigan in September 1989 and proposed in December. The couple married in July 1990 and moved to Northville in 1991. The next year, Kim gave birth to their first daughter, Katherine, and their son Zach the year after that. It was Katherine’s participation in youth theater more than 20 years ago that prompted Kim to join in and help.

Up to that point, Kim said, her own theater experience was limited.

“I was Hamlet in fifth grade,” she said, adding with a laugh that she was cast in the lead role because none of the boys in her class could memorize the lines. “And I tried out for Damn Yankees in high school,” she added, but after her singing audition, “They said go work in tech.”

Whether they are away at work all day, or in Livonia, Farmington Hills or Novi inspiring kids through In the Mitten, Northville is home. Kim sits on the Michigan Amateur Hockey Board and plays hockey every weekend with her girlfriends. Carl comes, too, and keeps score. The two enjoy antiquing, often finding set pieces for shows In the Mitten is working on.

And any time they need to shop for gifts, they look in Downtown Northville first.

“It’s walkable,” Carl said. “We’re a mile from our front door to the stoplight in town.”

Some of their favorite spots are Red Dot Coffee Company and Tuscan Cafe.

“We love the town,” Kim said. And as for her husband, “I can honestly say I love him more today than the day I married him.”

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