Have you ever ridden a tandem bike? Also known as a bicycle built for two, as popularized in the folk song “Daisy Bell,” the arrangement of a front and back seat allows two people to cycle together on the same piece of equipment. The catch, both cyclists need to be pedaling together in the same direction – hence the name, tandem. Brad and Tami Miller, founders of Tandem Marriage, have learned a lot about riding in harmony as they’ve traveled the beachfronts and boardwalks of Southern California.

“The people riding the bike seem to be in sync on a whole new level; peddling together, leaning together as they weave in and out of obstacles, and embracing each new riding adventure with gusto. For someone watching us on our bike as it floats past them, it can seem magically effortless, yet there is so much happening beneath the surface to keep everything looking so smooth and effortless. This sounds a great deal like a marriage,” they write on their website, tandemmarriage.com.

Pedaling a tandem bike as a metaphor for a marriage journey inspired their ministry tagline “Helping you enjoy your ride through life together.”

Brad and Tami Miller launched Tandem Marriage in 2015 as their “retirement plan” after running Restoration Counseling Service with more than 20 therapists in Redlands, California for 15 years. Tandem Marriage has become the capstone of their decades of work helping couples.

“We have always known that there are far too many hurting people and struggling marriages. …. and, everyone wants to know where to go to get genuine help for themselves and their marriages,” they wrote. Brad is an ordained pastor who spent 26 years as a professional firefighter, and Tami has been working as a Marriage & Family Therapist for 20 years, licensed for 15 years. She recently chose not to renew her license for two reasons: to be a marriage coaching team with Brad and to broaden her reach to couples outside of California as a marriage coach rather than therapist. The Millers also have served married couples in various churches for the past 25 years.

As they stepped back from running a full-time counseling practice, Tami and Brad were asked to partner with Sandals Church to lead marriage ministry at the largest (4500 strong) of the megachurch’s 15 campuses. They’ve been busy building and mentoring a team, hosting events, creating a pathway for couples needing help, all while coaching 9-12 individual couples a week.

What a “retirement” schedule!

 

Brad and Tami empathize with couples who struggle due to a lack of healthy marriage role models. Brad described the two of them as “pound puppies from broken homes.” Tami noted they can count 13 divorces among their immediate family. They are the only couple who has stayed married. Despite starting their marriage on a strong foundation of friendship, (the two met in junior high through their older brothers and were friends for more than five years before they started dating) the Millers also hit a marriage wall. After the first five years, they started to realize what they didn’t know about keeping a relationship going. “We just knew there was an exit,” Tami said.

But instead of looking for the off-ramp, the Millers made a different choice. They started attending a small church and became close to the pastor and wife, whom they describe as their first marriage mentors. They read every marriage book they could get their hands on, went to marriage conferences and queried long-married couples about their secrets to a healthy marriage.

They realize it was not “one thing” they did that got them back on track. “It was the accumulation of all the little things we did consistently over time,” Tami said. It didn’t hurt that Tami also was studying to become a marriage therapist and learning proven relationship tools and techniques. Even before the Millers started dating, Brad would ask his friend Tami for advice about his relationship problems, “because she always has such great insights,” Brad wrote. “That seems almost comical now to know I was seeking advice from a future Marriage & Family Therapist who would one day be my partner as a marriage coach!”

The Millers celebrate their 40th anniversary on Easter Sunday 2025.

 

Contrary to the popular song “Love Will Keep Us Together,” the Millers have found a successful marriage requires more than just love and good will.

“There was more to having a great marriage than marrying someone you loved deeply then merely letting things fall into place — we now refer to that as ‘drifting’. The reality is that if husbands and wives are not intentional with marriage, very little will ‘fall into place.’ More likely than that, things in marriage will drift or fall out of place when we don’t have the skills needed coupled with intentionality to prevent this from happening.”

They encourage couples, “We know that the best way to help you through your challenges is to have someone who understands and has the training, experience and expertise to help people just like you. Like riding in tandem,

“You have to keep moving together to keep your balance, and you need to keep peddling in the same direction to get anywhere!”

The Millers offer tools and resources at tandemmarriage.com to help couples get on the same foot – many of them at no charge.

Many free blog posts address common topics they’ve discovered working with couples. Each article takes just a few minutes to read and includes discussion questions to help couples connect, engage and communicate. Top posts include: 80/20 Listening – You Don’t Listen as Well as You Think You Do; You Think You Know How Healthy Intimacy (Sex) in Marriage Works, But You Probably Don’t; 10 Things You Can Do Today to Take Your Marriage From Good to Great; Your Guide to Knowing the Difference Between the Big Things and the Little Things in Marriage; Yes, You Can Have a Better Marriage in Seven Days; and There is More Power in a Marriage Vow Than You Realize.

Likewise, the Millers address common marriage concerns on The Debrief Podcast with Pastor Matt Brown.

A free Feelings Chart helps people broaden their emotional understanding.

Links to a personalized Tandem Marriage page allow couples to enjoy or repost marriage-building pictures and quotes without getting sucked into a social media swirl.

Downloadable Lover’s Post-it notes are one of the tools they offer to foster connectedness. Inspired by Tami’s habit of leaving love notes for Brad in his lunch, closet or car, the downloadable pages are a template to print pre-written messages on Post-it notes. You can print them at home, add a name or personalize and use them to share some care with your spouse. A 60-second video on the site demonstrates the easy process.

The Millers published a book in 2020 they consider their hallmark. Ready to Surrender: Poor Communication in Marriage is a Battle You Can Win, is “the book nobody wants but everybody needs,” Tami said. “Talking about conflict in marriage is not sexy, but there’s a conflict piece in every couple we work with. Ninety percent of people who come to us say they are having trouble with communication. Why is it they are stinking at it? When somebody says communication is the problem, it’s really conflict.”

“Without a solid plan to deal with conflict, it will creep into any marriage,” they write. “The more conflict you have, the more strained your communication is, and the less happy and at peace you will be. We can teach you healthier ways to communicate, which will reduce and resolve conflict…. Our experience tells us that as the level of conflict goes down, happiness and satisfaction both go up.”

They tell couples, “The conflict you are having currently in your marriage started before you got married.” They’ll help them develop self-awareness and “other awareness” to understand where the conflict originated. People learn to understand their spouse in a deeper, more intimate way and realize it’s not just about stopping doing the thing that bugs the other. The Millers look for patterns. “What did you learn about life and relationships – conflict, coping, love – from the people who raised you?” Brad asked. “We empower them to be more self-aware and in control of themselves and their emotions.”

“We love the Ah-ha moments,” Tami added.

 

Couples also can sign up for coaching sessions for conflict-resolution or enrichment. The Millers will even take couples on a tandem biking weekend! “We start with their story and determine what they need depending on how severe their challenges are,” Tami said. They describe their coaching style as Attachment Theory with a Biblical connection.

Most couples who are in a dark place in their marriage think there’s no hope, she added.

 “We are really good at giving people hope,” Tami said. “We tell them, ‘Look what we came from! If we can do it, you can do it.’”

 

And after decades of counseling, nothing shocks them. They’ve helped a couple who uncovered infidelity encompassing more than half of their decades-long marriage walk through the brokenness and betrayal and rebuilt communication and affection from the ground up.

Another newlywed couple was struggling with communication. The Millers taught them tools to help deescalate heated arguments and uncover why they were reacting to each other.

Tami and Brad will often point their marriage couples back to a Tandem Marriage blog post on an issue as homework.

Through their experience helping churches with hurting couples, they realized churches have been ill-equipped to be on the front line for struggling marriages, because finding solid, qualified, and professional support for people can be difficult and costly.

The Millers also contract with their church to provide marriage coaching services to parishioners and church staff – an arrangement they’ve had in place for at least a dozen years through their group counseling practice. While the church pays for people to receive services, the layer of separation allows for privacy – and especially for pastoral staff who might not feel comfortable sharing struggles.

 

With Brad’s pastoral background, he knows firsthand the difficulties. “When you are the pastor, everybody thinks you have all the answers,” he said. “Pastoral couples are really lonely – they think there’s nobody else to talk with.”

While the Millers wish they could mentor everyone, they realize they can’t pour into all 4500 members of their church. They focus on directly supporting their marriage mentors, offering monthly training to enrich their marriages and being available to help if leaders get stuck. They call their marriage mentors “marriage heroes” and remind them they need them on the front lines if they are going to change the culture of the church. “As we pour into the leaders and their marriages thrive, it overflows to the couples they mentor,” Tami said. “A rising tide raises all ships,” Brad added.

“No matter whether you are a senior pastor, a staff member, high level volunteer, or just a person in church, everybody needs to have somewhere to go to get help when they realize they are not in a good place. That’s why we have a team. If the leadership team gets stuck, they can contact us, and we are going to help them get through it. We’ll connect church members with marriage mentors or a marriage event. There’s no excuse to sit in a mediocre marriage – there really is every reason to have a God-honoring marriage.”

Brad and Tami are still developing programs for their church – what’s working now is a Marriage First community building event held the first Saturday of every month that draws a large group of couples. They’ve planned these events to coincide with the church’s 5:45 p.m. evening service. The fast-paced evening offers a speaker and discussion time. Sometimes a light snack might be served. Since Sandals Church also offers an earlier 4 p.m. service, couples can attend a church service, then go directly to Marriage First. An added bonus for parents, they can keep their children checked in to the kids’ program for both the service and the Marriage First event. The Millers noted the importance of childcare to give couples with kids a break to focus on themselves. Sandals Church uses a Livescan dynamic background check that constantly updates information, so parents can trust the people with whom they leave their children.

During the even months, more intimate groups are formed so those in these groups can benefit from their discussions together and will continue to meet to unpack a marriage theme with more time for community.

 

Marriage First has been attracting people in all ages and stages – from brand new marrieds to couples in their 60s. “There’s a big variety,” Tami said, “and they all feel comfortable.”  This arrangement will hopefully provide opportunities for what Brad termed a “mentor sandwich.”

 

“It’s ideal for every couple to be connected with one that’s ahead that’s pouring in to them and another younger for them to pour into. We try to create opportunities for that to happen organically,” he said.

 

They hope the community groups will serve as incubators, so people connect and gel and eventually begin meeting in each other’s homes.

As the Millers flesh out their new “retirement” schedule – juggling coaching, mentoring, leading marriage ministry, speaking and writing, they hope to be able to help other churches set up their own marriage ministries based on the lessons Tami and Brad have learned.

 

Marriage was God’s amazing idea and meant for his purpose, they remind. “Know your ‘Why’ and talk about it publicly. People will want to be part of that. Build a team, because you can’t do it alone, and be a part of your church’s calendar.” The marriage ministry at Sandals Church started meeting monthly and built momentum then evolved over time based on what people at their campuses needed. Brad and Tami hope to add a church consulting page with resources to Tandem Marriage’s site in the near future, as well as train teams to work with other churches, so more marriages can continue to honor God better.