Steph and his wife Ayesha Curry are one of those couples that you just love to love. They do mostly everything right and try not to get swept up in the trenches of fame. They are grounded and keep their morals close by as they attempt to put their influence toward the good of the culture and for the good of the world.
In fact, one of the things that I love most about them is that they often try to do all of the above in new and creative ways. For example, Steph Curry is one of the loudest sponsors for the Howard University Collegiate Golf team. And because we know that golf isn't as prevalent in the Black community as a sport such as basketball, this is what I mean when I say they find new and creative ways to be involved.
They find the holes and seek resolutions.
This is especially true in their latest efforts: the effort to eliminate food deserts in Oakland. And they're doing so with a loud and colorful school bus.
The 'Eat. Learn. Play. Bus' is a hot pink, pale blue and yellowish gold mobile bus that will roll through the streets of Oakland, in an effort to do much more than the old school ice cream trucks that we know from back in the day. Instead, this bus will feed, teach, energize and engage Black children (and other youths of color) in Oakland's stressed communities. Ayesha opened up about the vision saying:
"This idea came basically from me wanting to find a way to eradicate food deserts within the Oakland area. At first, the idea was around, 'How can we find locations where people can come and pick up fresh produce and other things for their families?' Logistically, especially with Covid, that idea started to seem far-fetched."
From here, according to reports, CEO of Eat. Learn. Play. suggested a bus and the rest goes down in we-gotta-look-after-our-communities history. Cruising Kitchens was solicited to convert the bus, and Oakland mural artists Illuminaries created the visuals on the bus that include Ayesha Curry cooking, Stephen Curry shooting a basketball, local landmarks like the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and more. So awesome!
Kelly Sullivan/Getty Images for Eat. Learn. Play.
One side will function as a food truck or mobile pantry to provide the community with free hot food and fresh produce to children and families. The other side is a stacked library, packed with books and ways to engage all, which is the Currys way of staying on top of Oakland's troubling literacy rate (Black children in Oakland are four times more likely to be reading many years below their grade level in comparison to white students #whew). The bus also houses flat-screen TVs, a sound system to get the kids pumped, and a bus rooftop area that can hold up to 35 children. Of the schedule, Steph says it will travel randomly to schools, community centers, and churches.
"We want mystique about it. So it may show up anywhere, take on a life of its own and has the capabilities to host an event anywhere."
Ayesha added:
"And I know a guy who plays basketball, so we added a basketball hoop for the play pillar. It turned into this bigger-than-life idea. It's not the teacher's fault. It's not the parents' fault. It's a community issue. Let's get together, give this model a try and see if we can create some excitement around reading. If we can all join together and try to fix the issue together and turn these numbers around, then I think we're doing something right."
Adore these two! Be sure to be on the lookout, Oakland!
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Featured image by Kelly Sullivan/Getty Images for Eat. Learn. Play.
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Those rumors were more than laid to rest when Jodie and Joshua went to the 2023 Oscars together earlier this year, and even more recently, when they celebrated her birthday together last month during the September unveiling of the Lotus Emeya.
Jodie Turner-Smith celebrates her birthday with husband Joshua Jackson at the unveiling of the new fully-electric Lotus Emeya on September 07, 2023 in New York City.
Brian Ach/Getty Images for Lotus
Despite seeming particularly happy and in love, perhaps the writing was already written on the wall even then. In the past, Jodie has been very celebratory publicly about her love for her estranged husband, even boldly recounting their love story for the books in a 2021 interview with Seth Meyers.
When Jodie and Joshua met, it was while at his birthday party in 2018. Their relationship was hot and heavy from the start, with Jodie openly noting that they began as a "one-night stand." During her 2021 interview with Seth Meyers, she jokingly referred to their love story as a "three-year one-night stand." She shared:
"First of all, I saw him before he saw me and when I saw him, I was like, 'I want that.' And then when he saw me, I just pretended like I didn't see him. He had to yell across the room to me, and I was wearing this T-shirt from a movie called Sorry to Bother You and [actress] Tessa Thompson plays a character called Detroit, and she has this T-shirt that says, 'The Future Is Female Ejaculation.'
"And so, he shouts across the room, 'Detroit!' He comes over and… does this really cute, charming thing that he does and just all night -- he just basically followed me around the party."
The couple were together from that moment forth, and even made things "Instagram official" less than two weeks later while on a dinner date. Joshua would later clarify to Insider that the night they met in 2018 was not a 'one-night stand' or a 'three-year one-night stand' like his then-wife joked but instead, it was "technically a three-night stand."
"It was sealed with a kiss that night and then we didn't leave each other's sides for, well, three years now," Joshua continued at the time.
In a July 2021 interview with Jimmy Fallon, Joshua dropped more details about the why behind getting married. He revealed that he didn't know he wanted to get married to Jodie until "the moment she asked me."
"She asked me on New Year's Eve. We were in Nicaragua. It was very beautiful, incredibly romantic, we were walking down the beach and she asked me to marry her."
He added, "I did not know [she would propose], but she was quite adamant and she was right. This is the best choice I ever made."
Joshua Jackson Reveals Jodie Turner-Smith Proposed To Him
Jodie received quite a bit of flack for proposing to Joshua because it goes against tradition and what society sees as acceptable for a woman to do to a man, and proposing isn't one of them. No matter how much time has passed, the viewpoints around who should do the proposing and who should be proposed to are still very traditional.
After being on the receiving end of such backlash, Joshua would later clarify to the media in a separate interview that it wasn't just Jodie's proposal to him that sealed the deal of them getting married, he proposed to her too. She might have initiated it, but Joshua followed through.
"I accidentally threw my wife under the bus because that story was told quickly and it didn't give the full context and holy Jesus, the internet is racist and misogynist," he explained to Refinery29 that same year. "We were in Nicaragua on a beautiful moonlit night, it could not possibly have been more romantic."
David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images
He continued, "And yes, my wife did propose to me and yes, I did say yes, but what I didn't say in that interview was there was a caveat, which is that I'm still old school enough that I said, 'This is a yes, but you have to give me the opportunity [to do it too].'"
"She has a biological father and a stepdad, who's the man who raised her. [I said], 'You have to give me the opportunity to ask both of those men for your hand in marriage.' And then, 'I would like the opportunity to re-propose to you and do it the old-fashioned way down on bended knee.' So, that's actually how the story ended up."
Joshua and Jodie would eventually marry in December 2019. Shortly thereafter, Jodie gave birth to the couple's first child, Janie, in 2020.
In a recent interview with Elle UK, Jodie shared the ways becoming a mother to Juno helped to heal her of her wounds from colorism she experienced in the past. "It's interesting because I had a lot of resistance to becoming a mother and, throughout my life, I always said if I were to have children, I wanted to have Black, Black babies so that I could affirm them as children with the love that I felt I needed to have been affirmed with by the outside world," Jodie shared with the outlet.
She continued, "Then I fell in love with my husband and we talked about having kids. I did have this mini pause, where I was like, 'She's going to be walking through the world not only having an experience that I did not have, but looking like people that, in a way, I'd always felt a little bit tormented by.' Now that I've got this little, tiny, light-skinned boss, I feel like it’s the universe teaching me lessons. I've been given a daughter who looks this way to heal my own conversations around colorism."
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Featured image by Amy Sussman/Getty Images
