Katie O'Keefe

I was born in the South and was raised on several different shores due to my father's Coast Guard service. Days spent on the beach with my family will always be some of my best memories. The ocean will always feel like home to me.

Martha Stewart and Audrey Hepburn were my childhood role models. My drink of choice is a simple espresso. The Restoration Hardware catalog serves as our coffee table book. Saturday mornings are meant for strolling the Farmer's Market and Sunday mornings are for praising the Lord. I count down the days to weekends on the lake, and have unhealthy obsession with day planners, greeting cards, notebooks and really anything paper.

I knew I was going to marry my handsome Big Man (Nate) the moment he started salsa dancing with me at my sorority's date party. He then took me to a Broadway show on our first official date. We got married less than two years later, and he's whisked me away from the big city to his hometown in Oklahoma with our puppy Savannah.

For more than 20 years, becoming a professional ballerina was my life. After spending the last few years dancing with injuries, I made the tough decision to hang up my pointe shoes halfway through college and finish my second degree in Public Relations. Now I use my communication and event planning skills as Tulsa's American Cancer Society Cattle Baron's Ball Manager.

Every day, I try to walk in love. It doesn't always happen, but I believe in living life to a standard of grace, not perfection. I agree with C.S. Lewis in that while I strive to make big things happen on this earth, "I find in myself desires which nothing in this earth can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world." I know, from experience, that He has made everything beautiful in its time. {Ecclesiastes 3:11}