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" Kismet, magic dust, and French fries all played a part in the courtship of Holly Robinson and Rodney Peete. Or, as Holly says, &amp;quot;It was the fairy tale, after the dream, inside of the storybook.&amp;quot; She was a stunning, successful TV actress (most famous for the late &amp;#039;80s crime drama 21 Jump Street), and he an NFL starting quarterback. He proposed in front of a live studio audience during the filming of the sitcom she was starring in at the time, Hangin&amp;#039; With Mr. Cooper. In June 1995, more than 300 guests attended their California wedding, the Reverend Jesse Jackson presided, and Holly surprised Rodney with an appearance by the entire marching band from his alma mater, USC. The dream continued in 1997 with the birth of twins, a boy, Rodney Jackson (R.J.), and a girl, Ryan. But three later, Holly and Rodney&amp;#039;s lives were rocked when R.J. began to withdraw into himself and the couple received his shattering diagnosis: autism. This month, the family offers two different perspectives of their journey, Rodney&amp;#039;s rock-bottom-to-hope memoir, Not My Boy!, and a heartwarming children&amp;#039;s book, My Brother Charlie, written by Ryan and Holly. The couple&amp;#039;s path was an unpredictable one, full of scary twists and turns that eventually brought them to the brink of divorce. But Holly and Rodney fought hard for their marriage, and now, nearly a decade after R.J.&amp;#039;s diagnosis, the family is thriving. Mom and Dad juggle time with their band of four \u2014 the twins, plus brothers Robinson, 7, and Roman, 5 \u2014 with work for their HollyRod Foundation, an organization that, among other missions, helps support kids with autism and their families. Rodney has retired from the NFL, but Holly&amp;#039;s still a part of the show-business world (she&amp;#039;ll appear this month on NBC&amp;#039;s Celebrity Apprentice, where she&amp;#039;ll compete against other celebrities to raise money and awareness for the charity of her choice, her foundation). The difficult road that Holly, 45, and Rodney, 44, traveled is one that all too many couples can&amp;#039;t navigate: Eighty percent of couples who have a child with autism divorce. Now, on a sunny Los Angeles afternoon, they sit in the comfy library at the home of Holly&amp;#039;s mom, Dolores (the couple&amp;#039;s own L.A. home is being renovated) and share the experience that almost ended their marriage. These two are the picture of respectful, intimate partnership: It&amp;#039;s impossible not to notice Rodney&amp;#039;s sideways stares at his wife as she speaks \u2014 part schoolboy smitten, part proud admiration, all love. How did your fairy-tale love story start? HOLLY: A mutual friend thought we should meet, so she dragged me to this club and Rodney was there. I didn&amp;#039;t have tingles or anything. I ordered some fries and I doused &amp;#039;em with hot sauce, so that really meant I didn&amp;#039;t like him \u2014 because no cute eating. When he tells the story, he says he actually really dug that I ate the hot sauce with the fries because that was sexy. No numbers were exchanged. I went off shortly afterward on a trip.  RODNEY: And I&amp;#039;m hounding our friend about her, &amp;quot;Where&amp;#039;d she go?&amp;quot; HOLLY: After I came back, my friend called and said, &amp;quot;Put on your Daisy Dukes, because Rodney Peete&amp;#039;s having a picnic.&amp;quot; We get there, and the place was lined with girls. It was like nine guys and 50 girls. We ate and left. So I&amp;#039;m home, and there&amp;#039;s a knock on the door, and it was Rodney. And I said, &amp;quot;Hey, don&amp;#039;t you have a party going on at your house?&amp;quot; And he said, &amp;quot;When you left, the party was over.&amp;quot; So I was like, &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;ll get you dinner.&amp;quot; And so we started dating. We&amp;#039;ve been together ever since. When he surprised me with that proposal, I opened a door on set expecting to see another actor, but it was Rodney. He got on his knee, and it was really lovely, truly that fairy tale.  How would you describe yourselves as a couple before and after you had the twins?  HOLLY: Before we had kids, we were adventurous travelers, fun-loving \u2014 sex in the kitchen, stuff like that. Like any newlywed couple, we were having fun. Then I got obsessed with being pregnant. RODNEY: That was a good thing, too. We talked about what our expectations were before we got married, and we both wanted kids, and we both wanted multiple kids. HOLLY: Once the twins came, things got very intense as parents. I had the bulk of the work because Rodney was away playing on the East Coast for the Philadelphia Eagles. We decided to keep our roots here because we didn&amp;#039;t know where the NFL might take us. I was working on a show, and he had a high-pressure job, and I was feeling the effects of him not being a day-to-day parent. And so I would grab these two babies, get on a plane, and go see him every three weeks during my hiatus. In the end it was a very dangerous game we were playing, trying to have it all. By the time the autism diagnosis came, we were already on the edge. Autism in Children: What You Need to Know What happened when R.J. was diagnosed? RODNEY: We both were devastated. HOLLY: We went through this emotional connection, and we just cried in each other&amp;#039;s arms. We didn&amp;#039;t know what the hell this autism thing was. We were both in denial for a few weeks.  RODNEY: I stayed angry and blamed the doctor and was still in denial \u2014 while Holly basically rolled up her sleeves and did what needed to be done. Do you think a lot of men react that way? RODNEY: Absolutely. I think a lot of men have this image, this dream of what their son is going to be or who they&amp;#039;re going to mold him into, and they want things for him. And it gets in the way of figuring out who your son really is.  And Holly, you as the take-charge, do-everything-we-can mom \u2014 is that, in your experience, the typical female reaction? HOLLY: Mostly. I would go out for coffee with some of my autism-mom friends and compare notes, and almost every one of them had the same husband that I had. I was like, &amp;quot;How did you get the same model?&amp;quot; And then eventually I watched most of those marriages crumble.  Did the two of you talk early on about what you were both feeling? HOLLY: We did have conversations, but Rodney shut down. Part of being in denial is that you don&amp;#039;t talk about your feelings. I would do these all-nighters with him, and the poor guy would just lie there in bed curled up. I&amp;#039;d say, &amp;quot;Are you listening to me?!&amp;quot; until 3, 4 in the morning. Remember that? RODNEY: I do. HOLLY: He wouldn&amp;#039;t respond, so I felt disconnected from him. He didn&amp;#039;t understand what I was going through, or what his son was going through \u2014 or he wasn&amp;#039;t trying to. I don&amp;#039;t think we had any conversations that could get us anywhere because he hadn&amp;#039;t come to terms with his feelings. RODNEY: The situation consumed us; all other conversations didn&amp;#039;t matter. Everything led back to, &amp;quot;What are we doing about R.J.?&amp;quot; And Holly telling me what the reality is and what I should be doing \u2014 and me not wanting to believe it. It started driving a wedge in the marriage. HOLLY: I would send him books upon books so he could read about what&amp;#039;s going on in this kid&amp;#039;s head. There were no dad books like the book Rodney has written; I looked all over. I would say, &amp;quot;Please, can you just start trying to understand?&amp;quot; And I would stand there with my arms crossed and say to him things like, &amp;quot;Do you even know what autism is? Could you explain it to somebody?&amp;quot; I mean, I always challenge Rodney, but later when I read his book, I thought, Oh, my God, I so went out of my way to emasculate him.  Were you able to hang on to any sense of affection for each other? RODNEY: I think for a period of time it was manufactured, almost. It was forced. It wasn&amp;#039;t natural like it was before we had the kids or even those first couple years when we had kids. HOLLY: We still tried to do our little hotel nights, and my mom would watch the kids for us. We&amp;#039;d try to get a little romance kicked in, but there was so much tension because of the autism. And also I needed help, but I kept pretending I didn&amp;#039;t. So Rodney would come home, and I would just be so independent, like, &amp;quot;Do what you need to do. I&amp;#039;ll take him to school, I&amp;#039;ll do this and that.&amp;quot; Rodney never had a chance to be involved. I was asking him to be involved, but then I wouldn&amp;#039;t let him do it. RODNEY: We were just becoming two ships passing each other. I was finally playing close to home [for the Oakland Raiders] and not able to be excited about coming home. I was going out more, drinking more, we&amp;#039;re not having sex anymore \u2014 and it was like, Where do we go from here? It all came crashing down after a therapy session in which Rodney couldn&amp;#039;t connect with R.J. Holly, you called Rodney to the carpet and said, &amp;quot;Either you&amp;#039;re on this team, or you&amp;#039;ve got to go.&amp;quot; RODNEY: It was a sort of meeting of the minds about R.J., and the therapists asked me to get down on the floor and try to interact with him, and he wasn&amp;#039;t responding to me; that was rough. Then to see him respond to someone else \u2014 instead of immediately going, &amp;quot;Okay, I get it,&amp;quot; I took it as, I got set up. She&amp;#039;s making me look bad. I&amp;#039;m off! HOLLY: I think that was the lowest point, marriage-wise. I knew I had to give Rodney an ultimatum. There was part of me that couldn&amp;#039;t believe I was saying it, and another part of me that was like, This is what has to be said: &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re going to have to figure this out because this ain&amp;#039;t working, and I&amp;#039;m going to have to leave you for R.J.&amp;quot; We didn&amp;#039;t use the D word too often, and that word was used more than once in that conversation. How did that moment affect you, Rodney? RODNEY: It made me let my guard down and be vulnerable. That was hard for me, because I had been expected to be strong and show confidence always \u2014 when you&amp;#039;re a quarterback, that&amp;#039;s what you&amp;#039;ve got to do. I was still angry, but I started to analyze the situation in a different way. It wasn&amp;#039;t about me. These people were trying to help my son and help me connect with my son. In retrospect, it&amp;#039;s also made me think how ironic it is that my whole life has been spent on team sports. And you go on these autism walks with families, and they all have T-shirts that say, &amp;quot;Team Luke,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Team Dan,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Team Whatever,&amp;quot; and it blew me away. That&amp;#039;s what it takes, a team, and that&amp;#039;s what Holly was trying to get me to understand. But I didn&amp;#039;t understand at the time; I didn&amp;#039;t know how to be on the team. Did things get easier after that? HOLLY: They did. R.J. started to reach some milestones. It&amp;#039;s crazy when your son [with autism] says something that typical kids say every single day. He had been nonverbal for so many years, so like, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t like pizza,&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;I hate my little brother&amp;quot; was a big deal, and Rodney and I were able to come together in those moments. In your book, Rodney, you recommend that couples go to therapy. Why? RODNEY: Therapy saved us. We went to counseling before we got married and laid some ground rules. That way of talking things out wasn&amp;#039;t part of my DNA; that was probably why we ended up getting married, because Holly knew I had the ability to change and do something different.  HOLLY: Rodney&amp;#039;s right \u2014 those therapy sessions before we got married were when I knew Rodney was the guy for me. I knew enough about marriage to know that with guys, especially the macho football-player types, if they won&amp;#039;t sit down and discuss their feelings, you&amp;#039;re in trouble &amp;#039;cause you&amp;#039;re going to run into issues. We didn&amp;#039;t know our issue was going to be autism, but you&amp;#039;re going to run into something. The fact that Rodney was willing, that was humongous. Our therapist, Sharon, was the guest of honor at our wedding.  How often do you go now? HOLLY: Once every few months, as needed. There are always going to be those moments in your relationship where you&amp;#039;re not going to be able to understand what the other person is trying to say.  RODNEY: [The issues we face] affect us in ways we don&amp;#039;t even know. Unless we really inspect them, we may never know. We think we can handle something, but unless you can get in tune with your history, your emotions, your everything \u2014 you&amp;#039;re gonna have problems. Have you found different things that you appreciate in each other because of the journey that you&amp;#039;ve gone through? RODNEY: I learned not to fight her instincts. HOLLY: Oooh, good one. RODNEY: There is a reality to a woman&amp;#039;s instinct, especially a mother&amp;#039;s instinct. May not be 100-percent correct, but there&amp;#039;s something to it. I still don&amp;#039;t always listen, but I&amp;#039;ve learned to appreciate that, yes, Mommy&amp;#039;s gut is right on. HOLLY: I appreciate his sense of humor and playfulness so much. I&amp;#039;m more conscientious about allowing him to be that person again. For years I turned into one giant eye roll, and now I&amp;#039;m like, Oh, yeah. That&amp;#039;s that Rodney that I fell in love with. That&amp;#039;s that guy I ate those fries in front of. Do you think this experience has made you better able to handle conflict as a couple, now and going forward? HOLLY: Yes, it&amp;#039;s definitely brought us together. It&amp;#039;s the whole corny &amp;quot;What doesn&amp;#039;t kill you makes you stronger&amp;quot; thing. The problem with autism is that you don&amp;#039;t know if things are going to come out fine. You just have to tweak the expectations. And that&amp;#039;s what I knew I needed Rodney for \u2014 I needed a partner in that journey. We still have our issues, but there&amp;#039;s never any talk of our marriage being over or any of that stuff we used to talk about. RODNEY: It&amp;#039;s Team Peete. HOLLY: It&amp;#039;s Go Team Peete. Win It: 30 readers will each win a copy of My Brother Charlie and Not My Boy! (Value of set, $42.) And all books are signed by the authors! To enter, go to redbookmag.com/winit. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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