They say that when you know, you know, andKatie Burrdidn’t need much time to decide that her partner was the one.
The Los Angeles-based hairstylist summarizes the unlikely love story behind her family of five in a viral TikTok video that stirred millions of users on the app. Inher eight-minute tell-all, Katie explains how she welcomed children with a man she “barely knew,” her now-husband, Paul Burr.
“This is the spark notes version of our beginning. The experiences we have gone through together are absolutely wild. It could be a movie,” Katie, 33, captioned her TikTok post, which has garnered over 2.7 million views.
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In the video, the mom of three details how she met her current spouse, Paul, 40, back in 2012, when he was working as a bartender in Hollywood. At the urging of her friend, Katie asked for his number and invited him on a hike the following day.
Courtesy of Katie Gross
During their outing, Katie shared that she was planning to move to Atlanta for six months to complete a hair mastery certification program. As she explains in her video, Paul wasn’t interested in pursuing a relationship with someone across the country. “So we left it at that and became Facebook friends,” she said on TikTok.
Katie moved back to L.A. after earning her certificate in Georgia, but she and Paul didn’t reconnect for another two and a half years. In fact, Katie tells PEOPLE that she didn’t even recognize Paul when they ran into each other again.
Katie and Paul Burr.Courtesy of Katie Gross
Just like their first meeting, Katie was a patron at a spot where Paul was bartending.
“He had grown his hair out, so he looked like a completely different person to me. I didn’t recognize him at all,” she recalls. “When I went to go close out my tab, he asked me what my name was for the credit card. And then when I told him what my name was, he was like, ‘I think I know you.’ ”
Once she realized they’d met before, Katie was quick to set up another meeting, but not with any romantic intentions since she and Paul were both going through breakups with previous partners. The hairdresser, then 25, had her career at the forefront of her mind.
Paul and Katie Burr.Courtesy of Katie Gross
“I was still growing my clientele and looking for different ways to offset the expenses of having the salon,” she tells PEOPLE. “I was like, maybe I can get into bartending. I know a bartender. Let me call him up and pick his brain about it.”
When the two met up for tea, their instant connection carried the conversation far beyond bartending. They chatted for hours about their values and philosophies. They got together several more times, and after six weeks, their friendship veered towards a slow-building romance.
Then Katie received news that changed everything. She was diagnosed withstage 4 endometriosis, a reproductive condition in which tissue similar to uterine tissue grows outside of the uterus. In her TikTok, Katie shares that she was “on the brink of infertility.” If she didn’t decide to have children as soon as possible, she’d likely never have children at all.
The timing felt wrong, but Katie tells PEOPLE that she didn’t doubt her wish to raise a family.
“It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted in my life. I’ve always wanted to be a mom,’” she says. Despite her resolute decision, Katie was still stressed about how her prognosis would affect her blossoming relationship with Paul. She resolved to be honest and explain her situation, but she wasn’t going to ask anything of him since they were only a month into their romance.
Paul Burr.Courtesy of Katie Gross
Naturally, their loved ones were skeptical, but Katie’s family understood that her circumstances were desperate. They knew motherhood was her dream, and though they hadn’t met Paul, they trusted Katie’s judgment.
They were able to start trying to conceive after Katie underwent a laparoscopy to remove scar tissue, but doctors warned Katie that her fertility journey was likely to be long and fraught. Still, the parents-to-be weren’t discouraged — they were happy to have more time to get to know each other and build the foundation of their relationship.
Katie and Paul Burr’s family.Courtesy of Katie Gross
While they had their tiffs over small things, like how to load the dishwasher, Katie tells PEOPLE she never once doubted Paul’s character. And her intuition proved reliable: Katie and Paul are now parents to daughters Noelle, 7, and Magnolia, 4, and 2-year-old son Beau.
Even after eight years together, Katie says she regularly learns new things about Paul, who now works as a financial business developer. She’s also getting to know more about her husband through the personality traits he’s passed on to their kids.
“[When] we see our kids behaving in certain ways or having their funny little quirks, I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, I never realized that is you. That is you, reincarnated,’ ” she tells PEOPLE. “I never put two and two together and that was something that could be moved on to our kids."
source: people.com
