Welcome to the second episode of our You.Two. podcast series capturing inspiring love stories from real-life couples.
Countless marriages begin at BC Clark. As Oklahoma’s oldest jeweler, we have reveled in witnessing stories bloom, unfolding into beautiful epics. We are now telling some of those stories.
In this episode, we meet Kevin and Lauren Costello.
From their roots in Oklahoma to their Hollywood happy end, it’s a romance that couldn’t be sweeter even if Kevin, a professional screenwriter, would have scripted it himself. Listen to this Pray for Rain winning couple’s journey and how each twist and turn along the way has prepared them for their next adventure – parenthood.
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Episode Transcript
Lauren:
I’m so excited for us to be parents. I think more than anything, there were years, there were some years that I was like, “I don’t know if I want to be a mom.” And then there were other years where I was like, “I want nothing more than to be a mom.” But I think what really solidified it beyond having kids with you is I think the world would be missing out if you weren’t a dad.
Kevin:
We’ll see.
Lauren:
Oh boy.
Kevin:
There’s a lot of bad influences in Los Angeles.
Lauren:
Yeah. Our kid could be a TikTok star at like two.
Kevin:
Yeah.
Lauren:
We don’t know.
Kevin:
That’s right. Got to watch out for that.
Lauren:
True nightmare. But yeah. Yeah. I think it’s going to be really exciting watching us be parents. I’m also a very emotional person. And I feel like in all things that I do, I feel like you ground me. So I feel like I know that I will get through the emotional woes of being a parent, of being a new mom, because I have you.
Lauren:
My name is Lauren Costello. I live in Los Angeles. I am 36 years old. I went to undergraduate and graduate school. I went to law school at the University of Oklahoma, born and raised in Oklahoma City. And I currently am a manager for Lululemon and I am on maternity leave right now, because we are expecting our first child in October.
Kevin:
Nice. All right. So my name is Kevin Costello. I grew up in Edmond, graduated from the University of Oklahoma, and moved to LA where I’ve been living since about 2007. And I am a professional screenwriter and television writer. And yeah, that about covers it, I think, the bullet points anyways.
Lauren:
I think the thing I like the most about you, and it’s something that I still say is I obviously think you’re very handsome and very smart, but you make me laugh. And that is, I think, the most important thing for me in our marriage, is the fact that you make me laugh.
Kevin:
Thank you. I think the thing when we first met that I liked about you the most was you were also funny, but you had a very big personality. And I remember when we were working together at [Gaijin 00:03:28] that you would storm in late, every single shift that you worked, but all flustered with grievances about why you were late. And it was always very funny to me because no one … You never got in trouble for it. Everyone just kind of accepted it. And it was a funny extension of your personality. But then I got to know you better and you were very sweet and cool. So that’s what I liked about you.
Lauren:
Timing has never been nice wrong suit. I’m late pretty much everywhere I go. It’s very rude, and I recognize that, but it is something I cannot change. So, but thank you.
Lauren:
I knew of Kevin, we were part of a larger, nebulous, friend group of people all throughout college. Like I said, my lifelong best friend is married to one of Kevin’s best friends, but I think we really got to know each other the summer after we graduated from OU. We both worked at a sushi bar in Norman. And it was really fun because a lot of our friends worked there.
Kevin:
Yes. Yeah.
Lauren:
And so that’s where I really got to know Kevin was that summer. And I remember his younger brother, Chris, my brother-in-law, worked for another restaurant that the owners of Gaijin owned. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, you have a brother?” And he was, “I have five brothers and sisters.” And I was like, “What?” Because I only have one. But yeah, I was really amazed. And then years later I got to meet all of his siblings, which was really cool because now they’re all my siblings and it makes holidays really fun.
Kevin:
Yeah. I knew you before, just through friends and stuff, and I was kind of intimidated by you because you definitely had a big personality and strong opinions and stuff, which I really liked. But it was kind of scary trying to talk to you. So I feel like we didn’t really get to know each other too much until we started working together. And I was still scared of you then, definitely. And to this day, a little bit. But yeah, then I … Just because everyone was friends and we would all hang out together after shifts and stuff. And yeah, that was a fun time for sure. But we weren’t dating back then. We were just friends.
Lauren:
Yeah. I think it’s so funny that you say you were scared of me because I think you were … Your personality and your intelligence, your humor is really intimidating to me. I think I do have a big personality. I’m very much an extrovert, but Kevin comes in with one liners and can really draw a crowd.
Lauren:
And that just … That took me a long time in our relationship when we first started dating and in our marriage, to understand that being an introvert meant he needed some alone time to recharge his battery. And I am not like that at all. I need to be around people. And so I would be like, “Are you mad at me? Are you mad at me?” And he’d be like, “No, I just need some alone time. I just need a break from everything.” And so I think it’s funny that you think that I have a big personality because I found your personality to be intimidating as well.
Kevin:
Good.
Lauren:
Good.
Kevin:
Shortly after we worked together as friends, my plan had been for a little while to just pack up everything and move out to Los Angeles. So this was right after I graduated, I hung around in the summer to wait tables and hang out with Lauren and then try to save a little money. And then I went to Los Angeles and so I was out there trying to survive for a few years before Lauren and I started talking again.
Kevin:
So I was out there by myself and one of my good friends, Ross Hazelwood, he started talking to one of Lauren’s really good friends, best friend, Erin, now Hazelwood, they’re married now. And they were just starting to get to know each other. And then I think that we reconnected through, hanging out with them together.
Kevin:
And Lauren, you were in law school at the time. And I was trying to get my career going in LA. I wasn’t really a screenwriter yet. I was working as an assistant and doing development stuff, but mostly getting coffee and commuting an hour and a half to Santa Monica every day and losing my mind. So but when I met Lauren, I was definitely … I feel like when we met, I was talking a big game about how I was trying to send my script to agents and I was going to get a career going. And it was all just smoke mirrors, because nothing was real. But I was pretty confident. So I feel like, yeah, it wasn’t … It didn’t seem like it was feasible.
Kevin:
It didn’t seem like it was feasible that you would just like pick up and move to LA all of a sudden, but it did end up happening like kind of quickly that you came out there.
Lauren:
My best friend, Aaron had texted me and was like, you haven’t done anything in two Thanksgivings, will you just come out? We’re going to go do karaoke and Kevin Costello is in town. And I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, sure. I was like, I haven’t seen Kevin in two and a half, three years since he had moved to LA. I was like that sounds like fun. And then we reconnected over Thanksgiving weekend. And then about a month later just kind of officially started dating. And I came out to visit him for the first time in January of 2011 probably. And I loved it out here. I loved California. I loved that in January it was 70 degrees and sunny and plus Malibu. It’s a big selling point. And so I just decided after that trip, I was like, you know what? It’s probably time to broaden my horizons and what better fact to do that than I really like love this man. And so Kevin flew in for my graduation in May. And like three days later we packed up my car and we drove to California and I’ve been here ever since.
Kevin:
I’m trying to remember those early, because I had roommates, like I was living in Laurel Canyon at the time in a house that was like kind of up in the Hills, an older house, but it had three bedrooms and two balconies and it like looked out on the canyon. We were like super lucky to live in this little cool bungalow place. And then my roommates at the time, Travis and John, I was like, this girl’s coming out. I’m in love with her. This is real.
Lauren:
She’s moving in with us.
Kevin:
She’s moving in with us. They were supportive. I mean, it was a fun time. Like no one was like, we were pretty young, we were in our twenties and just John and I were trying to be screenwriters, but mostly like playing video games all day. And you were studying for the Bar, the California Bar at the time. So it was weird, it was not ideal circumstances, but it was a fun time because it just seemed like it was a kind of crazy thing to be happening. But we were kind of like, this is kind of a risk, but we’re going to go for it because we just both felt so strongly about it. And yeah, it was super fun back then.
Lauren:
Yeah. You had the smallest of the three bedrooms and I remember thinking like, oh, we’re going to kill each other. Like this is how we break up, like this is how we get together and this is how we break up. But I loved living with the guys and Travis and John were really awesome to me. They welcomed me, no questions asked, were fine with me living there. It was just like really fun. Like it was a really fun way to spend my twenties.
Kevin:
Yeah. Like as soon as you moved out there, I kind of had in the back of my mind that like this is the person that I’m going to marry. And it was just a matter of I felt like we needed to get to a place where there was a little more stability in order to sort of really see a serious future together and like starting to grow up together. So I think that was a little bit of time, but it was definitely always sort of in my mind. And once we moved in together and started building a life together, it felt like that’s when I think plans started happening.
Lauren:
Yeah. I think I told my sister like pretty early on when we were dating that, like I was going to marry Kevin and similar to how Kevin said, like we just had to get our adult lives in order a little bit first. But I think that was the first year that Kevin really had a big break in his career. You ended up getting accepted into the writer’s program at Fox and they offered him-
Kevin:
A livable salary.
Lauren:
A great livable salary compared to like what we were making. And so we started looking for places to live. We knew what neighborhood we wanted to move into. We ended up finding the house we still currently live in. And I don’t know, I felt so lucky because I thought we were going to be moving into an apartment and it turned out we got to move into this really awesome house up in the Hills in east LA and we’ve loved it here.
Lauren:
But yeah, I think it was pretty soon after we moved in here, we moved into our current house in October of 2013. And then you proposed in December of 2013. So it was pretty soon after. I remember we were at a concert at the Wiltern and you asked me during like intermission or something what kind of ring I would like. And I was like, oh, and I knew in the back of my mind we were probably going to get engaged soon, but that still had felt kind of like a far off concept. And I was like, I don’t think I’m a diamond girl.
Lauren:
Don’t get me wrong, I love diamonds. We all love diamonds. But I was like, my mom wears an emerald as her wedding ring. And I was like, I think that I want like a gemstone and at the time gemstones I think were trending a little bit in terms of like the rose gold and then the quartz and things like that. And I was like, I think I want a sapphire. Yeah. And that’s just kind of all I told him about the ring that I wanted. I was like, I know that I want a sapphire as my stone. And then a couple of months later, right before we were about to fly back to Oklahoma for the holidays, he took me on a hike up in LA and proposed.
Lauren:
It was a big surprise to me. I honestly thought he was going to propose when we were back in Oklahoma with all of our friends. I’m really glad he proposed the way he did though. I think a lot of facets of our life are pretty private. And I’m glad that that moment was just between us and not between a big group of people. So yes, I was very surprised. I did not expect that. I remember I’d been running around like town all day long. I did go get a manicure and a pedicure ironically enough, just because it was right before the holidays. And Kevin called me when I was on my way home and he was like, hey, do you want to go for a hike? And I was like, just got my nails done, really? I was like, I just want to relax.
Lauren:
Let’s like order dinner. And he was like, come on. It’s so beautiful out. And it was, it was a really beautiful day in December. It was so sunny and so warm and so gorgeous. And I was like, okay. And so he convinced me to go on this. He was like, it’ll just be a little hike. We’ll just hike up to the Cedar forest in Griffith Park, which is the largest park in Los Angeles and right north of our neighborhood. And so yeah, we went up there and did some calisthenics and stretching, or at least pretending to, and then I turned around and he was on one knee.
Kevin:
Yeah. The forest up at Griffith Park is cool because it’s not really a naturally occurring pine forest. It’s a real forest, but it’s like very artificially contrived. So it feels like kind of a movie kind of set almost. Because you’re kind just stepping into this like cool little spot and yeah, I kind of figured there wouldn’t be anyone around to… I think there were a few people nearby, so I tried not to get their attention. I tried to do it like kind of quietly and then we hiked back down. We took the easy way down instead of doing a harder hike because-
Lauren:
Oh yeah. We took the road back down. That’s right.
Kevin:
Yeah. Yeah. Which was the right call. But it was hard to.
Kevin:
Yeah, which was the right call, but I was either… It was hard to decide where to do it because I thought it would be funny to do it somewhere stupid or annoying.
Lauren:
Like LAX.
Kevin:
Yeah, I got talked out of that. I thought it’d be funny to do it at LAX, because so much of our relationship was me flying out to Oklahoma, or you coming back, before you moved there, and then just us kind of going back and forth to Oklahoma multiple times a year.
Lauren:
My sister has very much clearly said she will never travel with us ever again because you are terrible with crowds, and I am terrible in claustrophobic environments like a plane. And she was like, “It was a nightmare flying at Thanksgiving and Christmas with both of you.”
Kevin:
I thought it could be potentially a stressful situation traveling at the holidays through LAX, it’s maybe not the right romantic mood that I was trying to strike. So I think I made the right choice.
Lauren:
I loved it. I loved where we got engaged. And like I said, this was also at a time where it was starting to become really popular that people would have a surprise photographer present for their engagements and things like that. And we don’t have any, aside from the photographs that you and I took of ourselves that day, to document it. And I just love it, that it exists only in my memory and not on film. And I love that it was in a spot that we hike frequently. So every time we have friends here and we take them hiking in [Griffith 00:19:39] Park, we typically take them up that trail, and we can tell that story of, “This is where we got engaged.” And it smells. Like you said, because it is this artificially contrived forest, it smells very strongly of Cedar because of the trees and the mulch and everything. And so every time I smell Cedar… They say scent is the strongest sense and tied to the strongest sense to memory. And so every time I smell Cedar-
Kevin:
Hey, come here.
Lauren:
Aw, that’s our dog, baby girl. It’s okay. But every time I smell Cedar, I very much am taken back to the time when we got engaged, which I think is like a really lovely memory.
Lauren:
We knew we wanted to get married in Oklahoma. I think a lot of people were pushing for us to get married in California because they wanted to come out here. But being born and raised in Oklahoma and then with all of Kevin’s family, at least his immediate family, mostly living there, it seemed to make the most sense for us to get married in Oklahoma, especially because all of our friends were there. And although LA clearly feels like home now, Oklahoma always will like have a very special place in my heart.
Lauren:
So we had decided we were going to get married there. And I really was in love with the idea of having a Christmas time wedding. And so everyone, no questions asked, flew in the day after Christmas for our rehearsal dinner, and stayed for just three quick days in Oklahoma, all so that they could be at our wedding, which I mean… I love your family immensely, but they just have done everything over the years to make me feel… I’m going to cry. I think it’s the pregnancy hormones. Just really loved and included.
Kevin:
Yeah, that was the most fun part about it, is that all of our families were having such an incredible time and it’s like an extension of our love and excitement, and to see everyone just having such a great time and losing their minds and being so forthcoming, and outpouring all this love and excitement for us. It was awesome. And definitely it felt like a unique experience that it will be hard to ever replicate, but-
Lauren:
Yeah, because most of our other siblings have been married in the summer or early fall, and your sister, Katie, was so great about like reassuring me. Being like, “Nobody cares about that. Everybody is so excited that we get to do something different. Nobody gets to spend the holidays together like this, our big extended family, nobody gets to see each other over Christmas. And this is just a different year where everybody got to be there for the holidays.
Kevin:
Yeah. And it had such a… I mean, we didn’t know that it was going to snow. I think it was completely unexpected to us, but it really made it feel like this sort of special holiday thing. Because we woke up on the day of our wedding and it was just a light dusting of snow on everything. But for the pictures, right before the wedding, there was just a little bit of snow on everything, and those pictures are really, really cool. And again, looks almost like a movie set or something, because it was just perfectly the right amount of snow, and the streets were clear, and it was just like a really, really beautiful day. It wasn’t even… It was just cold enough for there to be snow, but it wasn’t that bad.
Lauren:
It was awesome. Because it was two days after Christmas and I don’t think snow was really in the forecast at all, because it had been a rather warm December. And I remember waking up and it was dumping big flakes. I remember waking up and looking outside and I think your mom texted me and was like, “I think you guys might [inaudible 00:24:04] pray for rain or pray for snow winters. There’s a lot of snow, snowing on the ground.” And both of us hadn’t even considered that. And we were like, “Oh my gosh,” because of course Kevin had bought my engagement ring at BC Clark. So, that was a little added buzz, but with everything else going on on the day, that just floats in the top of your mind, but you don’t really keep that at the forefront.
Lauren:
And then it cleared up and was sunny by the time our wedding mass at 1:00 PM. So it was this really be beautiful dusting of snow over everything, but the sun was shining. It was just this really uniquely magical day. And for winter in Oklahoma, which can kind of be dark and drab. But I think it was… I loved our wedding day. It was absolutely perfect in my mind.
Lauren:
We got married in downtown Oklahoma city at the cathedral there that had a corner to the Murrah bombing memorial. And I think that was also really neat for some of our extended family who had never been able to visit Oklahoma before they got to come in, and a lot of them took advantage of it and went to the memorial. And I think it really made a big impact on them of how just beautiful and special of a place that Oklahoma really is. But we got married at that cathedral.
Lauren:
And then we had our reception at the Oklahoma heritage museum, in the Continental Bank building down in Midtown. And I knew I always wanted to have our reception there because I loved the big stately steps that lead up to the building. And it has a very old Hollywood feel to it on the inside. There’s a lot of gilded gold decor and things like that. And that always really spoke to my aesthetics and I went with an old Hollywood theme, namely, I mean, given Kevin’s career, where we live, and like I said, I like things a little glitzy and a little gold.
Lauren:
It was a really beautiful day. It was a really fun day. I loved our wedding.
Kevin:
Me too. It’s hard to talk about you coming down the aisle without just devolving into cliche. You looked amazing and the dress was so beautiful, and it all hit me in that moment that it was real. And I just got so happy and excited and all of the running around, and craziness leading up to it just disappeared. I think in that moment when we were together and doing it, and then we rode that wave of just ser-
Kevin:
We rode that wave of just bliss and excitement for the rest of the day. So I remember the morning of the wedding and all the running around beforehand felt a little stressful and definitely helped by the news that we thought we had technically won the pray for snow thing, so that was exciting. But, it’s hard to get everything perfect and get everything right. And I knew that you were feeling under the weather and so I was worried about that, but I think once we were together and doing it we had such an amazing time the rest of the day.
Lauren:
Yeah, I think that there was an immense sense of peace that I felt when I was walking down the aisle. It was just like, “Okay, this is exactly where I’m supposed to be at this exact moment.” Like you said, it felt like all of the running around from the morning, it just felt right, yeah. What I think a lot of times is a very stressful, but joyful moment and it just felt good to laugh with you.
Kevin:
Yeah, yeah.
Lauren:
But yeah, our first couple of years of marriage, like you said, was us trying to just figure out how to keep living and surviving in Los Angeles. I think it’s made us definitely stronger as a couple because we’re still thriving.
Lauren:
Definitely a lot of emotions. I definitely thought we would be out of the pandemic when we were having our child given when we got pregnant and everything. I thought we were looking down, the barrel, the end of this thing. And it turns out we’re actually right back up in a surge of it. So I think in my mind I would always deliver in a hospital where my parents and my in-laws were going to be there and everybody’s going to be waiting in the waiting room for us and going to be able to come in and meet the baby. But because of the pandemic and COVID and hospital restrictions, it can only be Kevin and I there at the delivery and then even in the recovery room. For the next couple of days, we can’t have any visitors. So it really is just going to be us. I think that that’s wild to me, but also feels exactly right, because it’s always just been us at these milestones because of where we live.
Lauren:
Definitely one of the biggest life change, I imagine. Looking down I felt very excited. I’m 34 weeks as of yesterday. So we are on the home stretch and yeah, I think the next few weeks are just dedicated to getting as much as what we can in order for the baby.
Kevin:
I don’t know how it’s going to change the mirror. I It’s hard to say how it’s going to change things. I feel like I kind of know what kind of mom you’re going to be, just because I know that you’re a caretaker at heart and it’s what you’re born to do so I don’t think it’s going to change you. I think that’s all going to really come through and you’re going to be so dedicated to it, which is really exciting. And for me, all I really had to go on is my relationship with my dog and I sing her lots of songs and do weird voices to her. So I think that those skills will translate pretty well. Yeah, I’m excited. I feel like I don’t know what kind of dad I’m going to be. Fun.
Lauren:
I think you’re going to be a very fun dad. I think you’re going to be a very loving dad. This is something I do want to talk about because I have one sister and my parents are still married after 45 years. And so my dad has known nothing but girls his entire life, my mom, and then two daughters. And now he has two girl dogs in their retirement twilight years. And so we tease my dad about being a girl dad and that it’s just a really special relationship that daughters have with their dads. And so whenever we were going to find out what we were having, it was at a time during the pandemic where Kevin, unfortunately, couldn’t be in the doctor’s office with me. So it was I was at the appointment by myself, but Kevin was on FaceTime with me. And whenever my doctor told me that we were having a girl, I quite literally screamed and yelped. And my doctor started giggling, because she was like, “I love when people have that reaction to what they’re having.” And I was like, “I’m just so excited because I’ve always seen Kevin as being a girl dad.” And I think that he’s very tender and gentle, especially like he said, he sings little songs and lullabies to our dog.
Lauren:
He’s also really great with his nieces and his nephews too. And so I think the type of dad you’re going to be is one, awesome. But two, I think you’ll bring a nice levity to the parenting game whereas I think that I’m a little bit more worried, a little bit more serious. I think you’ll be the lightness that I need to be reminded of that being a parent is an actually fun, enjoyable thing. So yeah, I’m so excited for us to be parents. I think more than anything. There were some years that I was like, “I don’t know if I want to be a mom.” And there were other years where I was like, “Ugh, I want nothing more than to be a mom.” But I think what really solidified me on having kids with you is I think the world would be missing out if you weren’t a dad.
Kevin:
We’ll see.
Lauren:
Oh boy.
Kevin:
There’s a lot of bad influences in Los Angeles.
Lauren:
Yeah, our kid could be a TikTok star at two.
Kevin:
That’s right. You got to watch after that.
Lauren:
True nightmare. Yeah, I think it’s going to be really exciting watching us be parents. I’m also a very emotional person and I feel like in all things that I do, I feel like you ground me. So I feel like I know that I will through the emotional lows of being a parent and being a mom because I have you.