Burning Desire: Local Couple Met Through Fire Service

Become a Bucks County Volunteer firefighter or Emergency Medical Technician, and you just might find a hot romance.

It happened to James and Rachel Marshall, who serve at Tullytown Fire Company.

The couple says their romances are fueled in part by shared values that include the desire to help people when they most need it.

Romance isn’t the only kind of love found at the county’s firehouses.

“We can’t guarantee that volunteering will introduce you to your future spouse, but it absolutely will give you a second family,” said Rob Kay, Bucks County Fire Chiefs & Firefighters Association Recruitment Committee co-chair and an Upper Makefield Fire Department trustee. “The brotherhood and sisterhood of fire department volunteers is like nothing else.”

“Volunteering is also one of the most important things you can do for the community you love,” said Jerry Barton, Recruitment Committee co-chair and Parkland Fire Co. Safety Officer.

Jim and Rachel Marshall

About four years ago, Jim, then a volunteer with Levittown Fire Co. No. 1, was visiting his best friend Richard Dixon, assistant chief at Tullytown Fire Company.  “We were sitting there at his house, and in walks Rachel,” he remembered.

Rachel had recently moved back to Pennsylvania after living in Tennessee for six years and decided it was time to “follow a dream” and become a volunteer firefighter. She was then going through training with Tullytown.

Jim, who is now 40, had been a volunteer wherever he lived for the past two decades, having decided as a boy who grew up next to a firehouse that he’d join as soon as he could.

Their shared interest led to a friendship, said Rachel, now 41, who was previously married and has two daughters, ages 21 and 10.  As they got to know each other better, feelings deepened and within a year, they were a couple.

“The day she graduated from fire school, I was the happiest guy on the face of the earth. I could not have been more proud,” Jim said.

They married this past July – Assistant Chief Dixon was best man – and are now both Tullytown firefighters. Both are also bus drivers for the Pennsbury School District.

Asked what it was like to fight fires with the person you’re married to, the couple said when they are out on a call, their relationship is the same as that of any other two firefighters. “On scene, it’s not husband and wife. It’s the brotherhood and sisterhood of firefighters,” Rachel said. “We all work together.”

It’s amazing to have that kind of friendship and common purpose with so many different kinds of people, Rachel added. “It’s all races, all nationalities, young, old, from all walks of life,” she said.

“You don’t have to be rich to be in the fire service, that’s for sure,” James said. “Your riches are saving somebody’s life, somebody’s property, somebody’s pet.”

Want to share the love?

All of Bucks County’s volunteer fire departments need fire fighters and other volunteers. Whatever your talents, however much time you have to share, you are needed. Visit www.bucksfire.org to learn more.