28 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {punchline} or our desire to play concerts,” Ryan says, “but it became so easy to let go of so many things and reprioritize.” They decided that being closer to their family was most important. Back in the Bay Area, Shannon and Ryan are among their family and childhood friends. They enjoy their favorite spots: strolling Saratoga’s Hakone Gardens on holidays, enjoying dinners at Hobee’s or an upscale evening at La Forêt in San Jose, and bringing the kids to Linden Tree Books in Los Altos, a place Shannon loved as a child. Ryan joined The Agency, a boutique real estate and lifestyle company. “Helping people, that’s the point of our music,” he says, “and you can also do that by helping people get into their homes.” His new Los Altos office on Main Street is just blocks away from The Post, where—years before they met—Ryan and Shannon had each sat at the bar, watching halftime shows, not realizing that one day, they would be the ones performing in a stadium. tuning in @haleyandmichaels in the Netflix film Walk. Ride. Rodeo. and its music video was produced by the San Francisco 49ers and shot at Levi’s Stadium. The couple traveled to 200 cities as they promoted their first fulllength album and played shows across Europe and the U.S. When the pandemic started, they were in England opening for the likes of Darius Rucker and Eric Church. The pandemic shutdown hit while they were at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. When they finally arrived home in Nashville, it gave them time to think. “We were just so in the grind,” Shannon remembers. “If you lose perspective—even the notion that it is possible to do something else—there is no time for that.” Later that same fateful year, the couple had their first child, Keira, welcoming her into the world with “Born Yesterday,” a sweet song that features their baby’s heartbeat while still in the womb. Two years later, little Liam followed. “Having [children] didn’t change our love of music
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