Our Great City

Anyone who has met Steve and Cheryl Anderson will tell you that they are about as opposite as they come. Cheryl, who was featured in 2003 on the Oprah Winfrey show as one of the funniest moms in America and who’s personal URL is www.ComedyMom.com, and Steve, a hard charging entrepreneur that just concluded the year as President of the Ft. Worth Chapter of the Young President’s Organization. Friends say that they are like the modern day “Lucille Ball and Ricky Ricardo.”

How these two got together is a bit like the old “Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup” commercials: “You got chocolate in my peanut butter. No you got peanut butter in my chocolate. Yummmmmm!” What might seem like an odd mixture at the outside turns out to be a delicious combination.

Steve and Cheryl met in San Antonio while Cheryl was attending UTSA. Steve had moved to south Texas to get involved with a small start up business after graduating from the University of Utah with Honors in just two and a half years of total class time. They met in church, which is what most people usually say when they meet in a bar! But they actually did. It was a young single adult congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and it was Cheryl’s first week there. Steve claims that the moment he met Cheryl, his mind was made up. “I’ve got to have me some of that.”

The “that” he refers to is Cheryl’s boundless enthusiasm, humor, charm, and energy. “When we were dating, all of my friends said that being around Cheryl was like being on ‘Happy Days’ all the time,” Steve says.

The two married about eighteen months later in 1993 and settled in the Texas Hill Country near Kerrville where Steve had become the CEO of the company he helped start.

Within the next seven years, the company had grown to the point that it was clear that it needed a new home in a larger city. “We looked at different cities all over the country and knew that the Dallas area was to be our home,” Cheryl says. “I’m a Texas girl through and through raised in El Paso to the west and Lufkin on the east, there seemed like no better place than Dallas, right in the middle!” she adds. In 2000 when the family moved from the Hill Country, Steve and Cheryl had four daughters: Ashlin, Abby, and Erin and Emily – identical twins.

As part of the businesses that Steve has founded and run over the last twenty years, he speaks all over the world. He is the founder of the Total Patient Service Institute (http://www.totalpatientservice.com) which specializes in implementing the highest level of patient service, communication and management skills in dental practices.

Over the last twenty years he has spoken at every major dental meeting in North America, Australia and the United Kingdom, conducted hundreds of seminars, worked with thousands of dental practices to increase their productivity through patient communication, written over 100 articles for dental industry publications, authored 5 books, and produced dozens of audio and video learning programs. While not a dentist himself, dentists look to him and his organizations for some of the best practice management systems and advice available.

In 1995, he co-founded the Crown Council, (www.CrownCouncil.com) an international association of leading dentists and dental teams. Through the Crown Council, he and Cheryl co-founded the Smiles for Life Foundation, (www.SmilesForLife.org) which has raised over $27 million dollars in the last 12 years for children’s charities worldwide. A creative partnership with country music artist Garth Brooks and his foundation TeamMates for Kids lead to even larger donations well in excess of 60 million dollars over the last ten years. Steve was recently named the “Dental Businessman of the Year” by Excellence in Dentistry.

They are also the co-founders of the LEAP Foundation, (www.LEAPfoundation.com) which provides week-long success seminars for high school and college students helping them get a 7 year “leap” ahead in their career and their life which they donate their time to one week out of every year raising up to $300,000.00 in scholarship money for underprivileged children to be able to attend as well as the affluent.

All of these professional accomplishments notwithstanding, the Andersons are best known for their six daughters. “That qualified me to be a ‘D.O.D.O.’’ Steve says. (Dad of Daughters Only.) And it was to have remained that way until April 22nd of this year.

A phone call on that day lead to the addition of the seventh Anderson child. This time a boy! A distant relative was not able to keep and raise their newborn child and asked Steve and Cheryl if they would adopt him. They were thrilled to do so for many reasons, the first of which was to “pay it forward” and give the gift of adoption to someone else, just like it had been given to Cheryl in her teenage years.

Owen became an official Anderson in July of this year. Only 5 months old, he is the delight of his older sisters.

Today Ashlin is a sophomore at Carroll High School and swims on the varsity swim team. Abby is in the 8th grade at Carroll Middle School and dives for GC Divers local diving club. Erin and Emily are both sixth graders at Durham Intermediate School and love reading and being part of the school orchestra. Olivia started kindergarten at Johnson Elementary School this year. All the girls are pianists and music enthusiasts with other instruments as well. Avery and Owen are Mom’s buddies at home.

“Ours has been an amazing ride together” says Cheryl. While the old saying goes that opposites attract, Steve and Cheryl would say that opposites compliment each other. It is their deep faith; however, that has been the glue to their marriage and their family. “When we were married by Steve’s father, a lay minister in the LDS Church, he made it very clear to us that we were not only making a promise to each other, but to God as well. It is a three way promise and one of the most sacred and important commitments in life.”

As a family, they work to do meaningful things together beyond their favorite family pastime: water skiing and wake boarding. Each year they lead a group of dentists from around the country on a dental humanitarian expedition to some of the most remote villages in the Dominican Republic. Some of the girls always go along to work and to serve. It is one of the most meaningful things they do that keeps them grounded in “reality” and maintaining a sense of gratitude.

So when you see the Anderson's out at one of their many family activities in Southlake, say Hi to our Family of the Month and tell them you heard about them on OurGreatCity.com!