Saving a Marriage, Saving a Market

What do a rockstar, a Fort Worth Top Chef, and a dilapidated historic building have in common?

If you ask Micah and Jenna Kinard, they will say a need for renewal.

Micah, the rockstar, described how his marriage to Jenna, the Fort Worth Top Chef, had once been falling apart, much like the long-neglected and decidedly dilapidated Fort Worth Public Market. Today, Jenna and Micah are rebuilding both the Public Market and their marriage. Their love story traverses winding roads from late-night tours and busy restaurant kitchens to a plywood cabin in Alaska to finally return home to Fort Worth, where they are breathing new life into a landmark.

On their very first date, Jenna tried to impress Micah with food. “I cooked him this huge meal, and I tried to win him over with food,” she remembered. “That night we talked about how much we’d love to open up our own restaurant, but he was touring the world as a musician, and I was pursuing my own career as a chef.”

For the next decade, that dream stayed on the back burner as their relationship and their careers grew. Micah played shows around the world as the lead singer of metal band Oh, Sleeper. Jenna climbed the culinary ladder at some of North Texas’ most notable properties, helping open concepts like The Westin in Southlake and 97 West Kitchen & Bar at Hotel Drover.

Seen from the outside, they were thriving.

On the inside, they were slowly drifting apart.

“After building our careers and doing great [things], our marriage hit a real low point,” Micah said. “We hit a rock-bottom place in our relationship. We had been chasing career highs, but we were moving in different directions.” He realized something had to change.

“We decided that if we kept going down this path, there was not going to be any more us,” Micah recalled.

So, he started looking for answers. “I started praying about it. Then the Alaska opportunity came up with all of these confirmations. So many that it was laughable. We were like, I think we’re supposed to move to Alaska, live in a ten-by-ten plywood cabin with bear mace on our hips, and figure this out.”

They both laughed as they retold this part of their story, but at the time, it was a serious leap of faith. “We prayed about it, and it was just so obvious,” Micah said. “So, we said yes, and we quit our jobs.”

They packed up and got on a plane to take seasonal jobs at a remote lodge in the Alaskan wilderness. Jenna ran the entire culinary program at the lodge. Micah worked as the maintenance man and sous chef.

Then came another surprise. “We got pregnant,” Jenna said. “So, you talk about basically doing marriage counseling between the two of us in a plywood cabin in Alaska, doing the hardest jobs we’ve ever done.”

“We were in Alaska, two hundred and fifty miles away from the closest road to take you anywhere. Our neighbors were bears,” Jenna emphasized.

“We were working from five a.m. to ten p.m. every day. Zero days off for four months,” Jenna said. “It was the hardest thing we’ve ever done mentally, physically, emotionally. All the things. And we had breaking point after breaking point after breaking point, and all we had was each other.”

In that tiny cabin, without the distractions of tours or restaurant openings, everything came to the surface, good and bad. “God knew we were going to be going through this right now, and he actually wanted us to,” Micah said. “We thought, ‘That means we can access him right now. So, let’s bring him into this and see where the breakthrough is.’ And it happened.”

After three and a half months in Alaska, they finally felt their relationship start to turn. “That last month, we killed it,” Micah said. “We crushed it. It only took three months for us to figure out the groove, but we figured out our stuff; we let a lot of stuff go. It stretched us a lot. The Lord did a lot of healing.”

As the season wrapped up, one big question remained: what happens when they go home?

“We started thinking about what we would do when this job was up,” Micah said. “We were like, ‘All right, Lord, I don’t think we’re supposed to go back and just get separate jobs. That seems like it’s not the end of this story of us working together.’”

So, they sought answers. “We start praying about it,” Micah said, “and we got an email.”

It was from Wilks Development, a Fort Worth-based group behind several major local projects. Before Alaska, someone from that team had casually asked if the couple would ever be interested in opening a restaurant back home. Now, the question was back on the table.

This time, Jenna and Micah were ready to say yes.

In Alaska, Micah started dreaming and planning. “I was crunching numbers while I was in Alaska,” he said. “I was like, all right, we’re going to go back and open our own restaurant. I think that I’ve crunched all the numbers, and fifteen hundred square feet is exactly what we need to crush it.”

They emailed the Wilks team to let them know they were in.

At first, the project seemed straightforward. “They had one building,” Micah recalled. “We start talking to them about it, but a couple of months down the road they’re like, ‘Oh, turns out we promised that building to another group.’” So the search continued.

“They showed us another building that was twenty-seven hundred square feet,” Micah said. “I was like, ‘Oh, man, that’s a lot more than I was thinking.’”

They prayed again, felt peace about the bigger space, and moved forward. Then that option fell through, too.

Next came a building just a mile from their house. “To us, it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this makes perfect sense,’” Jenna said. And Micah replied, “We were taking it seriously, so we were praying for this thing every day, and [the] talks stretched on.”

At first, they worried the square footage was too big. Then a sermon at church shifted Micah’s perspective. “I thought, ‘Thirty-three hundred square feet is not a lot for God,’” he said. “If he’s doing it and we’re fully locked into his plan, laying down everything for him, it will work.”

That season became a turning point.

“It took way too long for us to realize that going our own routes and just trying to pursue our own dreams only led us away from each other,” Micah said. “It only led us away from him.”

They laid down every fear and prayed a simple prayer. “Lord, we want where you have us,” Micah remembers praying. “If this is it, great. If not, just shut the door.” Three days later, they got their answer.

“Three days after we prayed that prayer, oh man, we get an email,” he said. “‘So sorry, it’s not going to work out with you guys.’” Another door closed.

Three days after that, an even bigger door opened.

They finally heard about a space that felt different — the historic Fort Worth Public Market.

“My earliest memory of Fort Worth is in the backseat of my parents’ Suburban, leaving an event, just looking at the outside of it and wanting to go in,” Micah said.

Years later, in 2011, when Jenna was first moving to Fort Worth, Micah drove her past the same building. “He pointed it out and told me it was his favorite,” Jenna remembered. “I said, ‘What if we did something with it?’” At the time, it was just a passing comment. Now it felt like a promise coming full circle.

Flash forward to today, and the couple has partnered with a team to reopen the historic Fort Worth Public Market.

The Fort Worth Public Market was once a bustling hub with more than 140 vendors. Residents could pick up produce, file their taxes, and get a haircut in one stop. In 1941, the after-effects of the Great Depression and World War II forced its closure to vendors. Manufacturers used the facility until the early 2000s, and since then, this grand old building has mostly sat empty.

Having seen God carry them through the hardest chapter of their marriage and knit them back together stronger than before, the Kinards felt confident He would lead them in restoring this historic space as a place of love for the community.

When they first started dreaming about a restaurant, Jenna and Micah were looking for fifteen hundred square feet. Nine months later, they ended up with fifteen thousand. Micah and Jenna see that scope as proof of how God has been leading them and growing their trust. “His timing is unbelievable,” Micah said. “We went back again, we prayed about it, and talked to our business partner. We just had overwhelming joy about it and not an ounce of fear.”

With fifteen thousand square feet, they realized they could not open just one concept. They were about to bring several experiences to life. “We want to honor this building by staying true to its roots,” Micah said. “The old slogan was ‘Everything for Everyone,’ and we are trying to provide that.”

Inside the renewed Public Market, three concepts will anchor the space.

Madrone will be their Texas-inspired fine dining restaurant. The name carries its own meaning for Jenna.

“I named the restaurant ‘Madrone’ because it’s a Texas evergreen tree, so it’s always in season,” Jenna explained. “That’s the idea behind our menus. I’ll print them probably every six weeks in-house. We’re just looking at what we are working with right now. These relationships with our farmers and our vendors are very important to us. We want to be as close to the farm itself as we can be.”

Willow will be a cocktail lounge with a strong zero-proof program, so guests who do not drink alcohol can still enjoy thoughtful, crafted beverages.

Public Market Cafe & Goods will be a daytime hub featuring baked goods, coffee, and local products, including hydroponic greens grown on-site, handmade items from local artisans, and everyday pantry staples. Jenna is passionate about filling the market with local foods and local makers, creating a space where small businesses and neighbors can thrive together.

Through their interview, Micah and Jenna kept circling back to how different seasons in their lives prepared them for this one. The long hours in restaurants. The pressure of touring. The plywood cabin in Alaska. The breaking points and the healing that followed. Jenna said that while she has worked extremely hard in her career and in her marriage, she is excited to merge the two and let both become ways to reflect God’s love.

“We just kept coming back to ‘Everything for Everyone,’” she said. “To Micah and me, it hit one day. We were like, ‘Oh my gosh. Jesus is everything for everyone.’”

From a broken marriage to a restored landmark, the Kinards’ story is one of choosing to stay, choosing to rebuild, and choosing to trust God with each subsequent step. Their hope for every person who walks through the doors of the renewed Fort Worth Public Market is simple.

Jenna said, “I hope everyone leaves feeling just a little more joyful than when they entered.”