Married Tampa execs take on a new challenge together every year

Executives

Jessica Muroff, CEO of United Way Suncoast and Owen LaFave, Pinellas County market president of the Bank of Tampa. The couple has been married for six years. Muroff has been with United Way Suncoast since 2019 by way of the Girl Scouts of West Central Florida, where she was also CEO. LaFave has been with Bank of Tampa for 13 years, after previously serving as VP of commercial real estate banking for TD Bank. Both fill their days with different levels of involvement with nonprofits, raising a blended family of four teenagers; LaFave even hosts a podcast called Money Market. 

Diversion

Not content to simply share a hobby as couples often do, Muroff and LaFave instead choose a new competition-based skill to learn with a clear goal in mind each year. “Owen and I are very intentional about our annual goals,” Muroff says. “We're also very goal oriented people, very driven, competitive people.” Over the years, the pair have hiked a glacial mountain in Washington State, taken dance lessons that ended with a judged competition and, in 2024, the pair signed up to run the Jungfrau Marathon in the Swiss Alps.

The journey, not the destination: The point is to spend quality time together training throughout the year and finishing together no matter what. “It is kind of a scheduled time that we need to work on that common goal together,” LaFave says. “But then also, experiencing that, whether we succeed or fail, I think really helps just deepen our relationship.”

No guarantees: However, crossing the finish line doesn’t always happen. The Jungfrau Marathon had strict time restrictions for meeting certain checkpoints: 20 miles into the 26.2-mile race, the pair missed the cut off time by less than ten minutes and were pulled from the fold, then took the train down the mountain after having just scaled ‘the wall’ of the hike — a 3-mile stretch with a 1,568-foot elevation gain and 22 switchback curves, according to the Jungfrau website. 

“It's very humbling, but also recognizing all of the effort and work that goes into something like that and every single time we do something like this, I learn a different thing about myself, about our relationship, about the bounds which are always expanded every single time,” Muroff says. 

Muscle Toning: Lessons learned along the way also guide their leadership in their respective roles. “That resilience piece of it, understanding that with both of our jobs, we're constantly challenged, and we're trying new things, and we're trying to push our organizations forward, or trying to help other organizations, nonprofits in the community, do different things,” LaFave says. “There's an understanding that you're not always going to succeed. So just to be able to have that resilience and understanding that, hey, let's try our best and give it our all.”

Courtesy image

Just keep going: Muroff describes vividly the experience of pushing your body past its perceived limits, noting the difference between physical and mental limits and the advantages of going through those scenarios. “In these moments where we are physically and emotionally taxed to the nth degree and and then just so completely there for one another and pushing each other to keep going and to push through pain and push through hard, it's a really beautiful thing.”

Like no one’s watching: The pair agrees: the most challenging and rewarding skill they have learned together is dancing. “I knew it was gonna be challenging, [but it was] way more challenging than I thought,” LaFave says. After approximately 30 lessons and hours of practicing each week, the pair competed in a ‘Dancing with the Locals’ competition hosted by the Plant City Rotary Club to a rendition of Prince’s 1986 hit “Kiss”. Although they didn’t place, they certainly secured bragging rights, as seen in this video. 

What’s Next: For 2025, decisions are being finalized, but a serious contender is a rim-to-rim-to-rim hike of the Grand Canyon. LaFave notes there is a rim-to-rim hike, but that was not seen by Muroff as challenging enough, so the third rim was added to keep it interesting. Muroff encourages, “Even when you think you're done, you are not even close to being done. So keep pushing through that.”