We met in the Twin Cities at an Asian fusion restaurant called August Moon. Scott was my server. At the end of the meal, he slipped me a fortune cookie that read: “If you ask your waiter out for coffee, he’ll say yes.”

In 2001, we married and launched “Scott Schoeberl Photography,” which was promptly renamed to “Olive Juice Studios”. Why “Olive Juice”? It had to be easy to spell so people could find our website (many photographers did not have one yet) and it had to mean something. There’s a childhood game where you mouth the words “olive juice” slowly and it looks exactly like you’re saying “I love you.” That’s what we do. We photograph “I love you” pictures.

We photographed weddings (exclusively) on the weekends because we still had full-time jobs during the week.

Our first website cost $1,000 and wiped out our savings. It had beautiful Flash animation that was completely unwatchable on dial-up internet (most homes didn’t have cable yet). We consoled ourselves with the fact that our brides were probably planning their weddings at work anyway.

TheKnot.com was a brand-new website helping brides find wedding vendors. A basic listing — one photo, $65/month — required a 6-month contract. We were terrified we wouldn’t make enough money to cover it.

We were one of the first photographers in the Twin Cities to join TheKnot.com. There were only 25 of us on the site. This is because websites were still new to photographers (digital cameras didn’t exist yet, we had to scan negatives to get a digital file). Today, there are over 1,100 Twin Cities photographers listed on TheKnot.com.

We met with brides and grooms in our Minneapolis home. I did all the talking. Scott smiled and nodded. I described Scott’s style as “anti-Martha Stewart” because it wasn’t quiet and sweet. It was loud and proud.

Scott hired former students to assist him at weddings and kept our refrigerator stocked with 30–35 rolls of both color and black-and-white film for each event.

Every frame cost money. Every choice mattered.

Scott didn’t have an LCD screen to review his images before leaving a wedding. He waited days — sometimes a week — to find out if he’d gotten anything. His camera settings had to be perfect. If he didn’t “get it right in the camera,” Photoshop couldn’t help him later.

I printed every single frame he shot and critiqued his work from a bride’s point of view.

The post-9/11 recession threatened both of our full-time jobs. So, in 2002, we took our biggest risk yet: I accepted a new job in Public Affairs at Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN. Scott took a leave of absence from teaching in Chaska MN and started booking portrait sessions on weekdays. Two years later, in 2004, we found an old farmhouse in NW Rochester, converted the detached garage into a photo studio, and planted a wood sign at the end of our driveway.

Growth required difficult choices. The hardest was parting ways with one of Scott’s first assistants. She was incredibly talented and loyal, but her style was pulling toward traditional — not the direction Olive Juice was headed.

Shortly after, Scott handed me my first camera and made Jessica, his remaining assistant, a salaried employee. We became an inseparable creative trio for the next 12 years.

We photographed every event like a royal wedding, covering every angle. We referenced Princess Diana’s wedding when explaining it to clients. Everyone knew exactly what we meant.

Together, we led a revolution in how weddings were photographed in the Midwest. Editorial-style wedding photography (real candids, unposed moments, documentary storytelling) was brand new.

Our logo appeared in Fast Company Magazine. The Knot and Minnesota Bride magazines started publishing features of our wedding photos. I quit my job at Mayo Clinic because Olive Juice was getting too busy to do both. Then, after five years of failed fertility treatments and emotionally draining adoption attempts, we finally met our son, Louis. Our ultimate dream come true.

Our new gallery was a block from Mayo Clinic, surrounded by great shops and restaurants. For the ribbon-cutting ceremony: mini doughnut martinis with fruit skewers. For the grand opening: Neil Diamond impersonator and Newt’s burger baskets. For downtown Art Walks: wine, a chocolate fountain, and intimate concerts. The team (including newly hired Megan) could finally work in the same room, share work over networked computers, and feel — for the first time — like a real, legitimate business. The naysayers who’d been saying “Rochester already has enough photographers” went notably quiet.

The Knot magazine named Olive Juice Studios “Above and Beyond” and “Best of Weddings.” Minnesota Bride magazine continued publishing multi-page features of our work. Megan had her first baby. Jessica married her college sweetheart. And MVP first baseman Justin Morneau of the Minnesota Twins hired us to photograph his wedding. Every time we turned around, we had another reason to celebrate: There was lots of laughing, hugging, and crying in the very best way.

The Knot magazine awarded us “Best of Weddings” (again), Minnesota Meetings and Events magazine gave us a Reader’s Choice Award, and Scott’s headshot of a local restaurateur and sommelier appeared in Wine Spectator magazine.

We opened a second business, Apple Juice, on the second floor of our downtown building. It was a studio-only option for more budget-conscious families. We also started selling Rochester-themed greeting cards at Tangerine, a beloved downtown gift shop.

We photographed another Minnesota Twins wedding — this time for one of Roy Smalley’s daughters, Laura-Leigh. Roy Smalley was a shortstop for the Twins and played for the team when it won the 1987 World Series. Growing up, Scott pretended to be Roy Smalley when he played baseball with his little buddies.

Minneapolis/St. Paul magazine awarded Olive Juice Studios a first-ever Diamond Award for "Outstanding Wedding Photography". We threw a party at Rochester Art Center and invited all our customers.

Our original Olive Juice logo looked like a green version of the Welcome to Las Vegas sign. We replaced it with a sleek black and gold luxury brand to match the quality and sophistication of our growing body of work.

MODWEDDING named Olive Juice Studios in a national list of “100 Most Influential Photographers”.

A New York publisher hired us to photograph debut author Nickolas Butler, whose first novel had just sold for a record-breaking advance — reportedly inspired by his childhood friend, the musician Bon Iver (movie rights included). We were on a plane to Mexico when we opened People magazine and found a full-page review featuring our portraits. Vanity Fair Italia later used an image from the same photo session for a review of Butler’s second book.

2014 also marked the beginning of the end of our wedding chapter. Jessica had been commuting from the Twin Cities to Rochester for 12 years. Her family was growing. Our son was getting older and playing sports. Nobody wanted to miss another birthday or anniversary of their own. The pivot to portraits (weekdays only) began.

Jessica left Olive Juice Studios to start a new career in IT recruiting closer to home. It felt like one of those breakups you see in a rock band documentary. 12 years of creative chemistry, magic, and connection are suddenly gone. It was the right decision for Jessica, but we were heartbroken and genuinely worried our work would suffer without her. We were wrong, though. We found out our clients followed us — Scott and Kelly. The relationship, the shared history, the trust.

Wisconsin Bride magazine published photos from one of our last weddings.

A burst pipe flooded our downtown gallery — walls, the custom bar, the leather-stamped floor, all of it. Our landlord called early in the morning, just as we were loading the car to leave for a Twin Cities wedding. Scott sprinted to the gallery to rescue computers and backup drives before we left town. Megan cleaned up the mess while we were gone. We moved our downtown office and showroom to our house so the gallery could be repaired.

We returned to our downtown gallery and expanded into Rochester-themed merchandise — selling t-shirts, mugs, tote bags, neckties, and art prints featuring the corn tower, the traveling chicken sign, a “Mayo” jar designed to look like Hellmann’s mayonnaise, and a Highway 52 road sign. We also launched a successful campaign to save Rochester’s iconic corn tower. And quietly, in the closing credits of Disney Pixar’s Coco, an old Olive Juice Studios wedding photo appeared on screen.

One of our first headshot customers was Brian McQuilkin, physical therapist and co-owner of Active PT. At the time, he operated his business out of a space the size of a walk-in closet. It was located inside the Rochester Athletic Club. As Brian and his partner Joan hired new therapists, Olive Juice photographed each one, building a consistent visual identity for their growing practice. Active PT now spans 17 clinic locations and more than 90 employees.

COVID forced us to move our office home. Again. When the world reopened, we didn’t return to our downtown location — the building was going up for sale, Mayo Clinic had sent thousands of employees home permanently, and the streets that once buzzed with energy were quiet.

We remodeled our old studio behind the house and stayed. Now that everyone knew how to Zoom, our customers preferred to stay home too — no need for babysitters or downtown parking.

Our son, Louis, entered high school and did calculus in the back seat of our car as we drove him to soccer games and practices around the state. He traveled with us to Mexico, Belize, Spain, and Barbados, learning about different cultures and casting for big fish. He and his high school soccer teammates raised $25,000 for new uniforms and equipment. We documented all of it with our cameras.

Louis graduated from high school and headed to University of Minnesota —Twin Cities. We photographed senior photos for him and his best childhood friends, reminiscing about all-weekend tournaments, sleepovers, and tubing on the Mississippi River. Scott and I were so thankful for the quality time we had with our son and the memories we created as a family. It made us proud we switched from weddings to portraits when we did.

We’re still here. Still married. Still in Rochester and still making portraits we’re proud to put our name on. We’re still only available to photograph on weekdays but that is because we keep our weekends open for Louis. He’s not that far away, and we’re not done loving on him.