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PROVO — Working at a restaurant can put a lot on your plate; keeping the orders flowing and trying not to collide with your coworkers. But when you’re working so closely with others, it's no surprise there’s a little fraternization going on.
Logan Baugh and Yovmara Pastor are both servers at the Brick Oven at 111 E. 800 North in Provo, and make no secret that they’ve been seeing each other.
"I was thinking (of getting married) here in Utah, but my parents were like ‘No, you should do it back home,'" Pastor said, while chatting with some customers.
Even though Baugh and Pastor are coworkers, they’re moving on to the next step — they’re getting married.
“We started getting the same shifts in the same area,” Pastor said. “Small talk led to one thing, and then we were friends, really good friends, and then ... ”
You might think that makes them a little unique, but not around this place.
“She bought a cookie with a little note on it to ask me to go to the movies,” said Chris Ashley, a former server.
“I asked him out a couple of times, and he didn’t like me for about four months,” said Keana Ashley, another former employee — they’ve been married for the past two years.
“I don’t know if I actually noticed her at the table,” said Michael Crane, who waited on his future wife while working at the Brick Oven.
“Nine years later, we have two kids,” said Lindsay Crane.
“I knew about the love from Brick Oven,” Michael Crane said, "everyone meeting here, hitching up. But didn’t expect our picture to be up on the board.”
He’s talking about the board covered with photos that hangs right near the restaurant’s doors.
“Being right next to the colleges, you have college kids working here, you have college kids eating here, so it’s a perfect storm,” said Paul Morris, a former manager of the Brick Oven. It was his idea to create a board dedicated to all those who’d married either a coworker or a customer.
"When she started, I was like, 'That girl, you’ll never get a date with that girl. She’s way too pretty,'" he said with a laugh, while pointing out the photo of one couple.
Morris thinks the earliest “Brick Oven marriage” dates back to the early 1960s. The restaurant even made a video highlighting their propensity to create couples.
“It’s kind of like immortalizing yourself in the Brick Oven history,” Morris said, looking at the board. “Started getting the pictures, and then finally one day we had about six or seven, and then all of the sudden it started going further back and further back.”
Morris has even controlled the schedules of a few, trying to make a match.
“There should be way more kids named after me,” he laughed.
And of course, even Morris himself isn’t immune.
“I met my wife; she was a guest,” he said.
So maybe it’s from working closely together, or maybe it’s something in the pizza pie, but for those who’ve found happiness here, all they know is that’s amore.
“I say, just have an open mind about who you date,” said Baugh, who plans on marrying Pastor in June. “If you close off your options, some things might not happen. Take a shot, it might turn out to be worth it. It did for me.”
