jill.hoffman@roanoke.com 381-1679

He was a math teacher at Alleghany County High School.

She was a chemistry teacher at Blacksburg High School.

He visited his sister in Blacksburg during Easter of 1976.

She shared an apartment with his sister.

The teachers had dated others to no avail. They met. This was different.

They married in June 1977.

After 60 combined years in education - many of which they spent in Montgomery County Public Schools - Julie and Carl Grady retired this summer from their respective jobs at Blacksburg High School and Christiansburg High School.

Julie, 52, and Carl, 51, called it quits after they saw the county's new three-year salary scale for veteran teachers.

"I feel like I was slapped in the face," Carl Grady said.

While the school board approved 7 percent average pay raises this year for employees, they gave only 1.9 percent raises for the last two years because of budget constraints. Many experienced teachers hit the county's pay-scale ceiling years ago.

They had considered leaving the county in four or five years and commuting to Bluefield, W.Va., as teachers. But after Carl Grady read an informational sheet from the Montgomery County Education Association this winter, he bumpedup the plan.

"He came home and said, 'Let's go,'" Julie Grady said. "I said, 'OK.'"

School officials, who don't control the salary scale, are smarting at their loss.

Betti Kreye, supervisor of math for Montgomery County, said Carl Grady made all students believe they could do math.

"I think he helped students see the connectedness of mathematics to the real world," Kreye said.

She has interviewed a "very good pool" of candidates but none with Grady's experience.

Julie Grady will head to Virginia Tech full time to get her doctorate in curriculum and instruction with an emphasis on science education. She has taken some classes but has two more years of coursework.

Carl Grady is on his way to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina to be a math teacher-trainer. He will make at least $60,000 - a 20 percent raise.

The couple just sold their airy house and nearly 9 acres of land, where a meandering stream runs through the front yard.

Julie Grady is moving into the Terrace View Apartment complex in Blacksburg, where she lived 28 years ago. Her husband is deciding where to hunker down in North Carolina.

The Gradys' two children will also leave the nest. Cullen, 23, graduated this spring from Virginia Tech with a bachelor's in horticulture; Sara, 20, is a junior at Virginia Tech.

The couple will commute on weekends for however long Julie Grady stays in the doctoral program. They are not nervous about being separated.

"After you've been married for a long time, you just know it's going to be fine," she said.

Plus, they were so busy during the school year that weekends were together time. And the pair has always allowed each other space. For vacations, Julie Grady would fly with students to Peru. Her husband would take road trips to Houston.

"I think most people our age are looking forward to settling down and having things be predictable," she said. "I think we're excited about being unpredictable."

Their converging paths started in different states.

In 1974, Julie Round received her bachelor's degree in math, with a minor in chemistry, from Radford College; Carl Grady got his bachelor's in math from the University of Pittsburgh.

That year, Julie taught at Gilbert Linkous Elementary and Blacksburg High School; Carl started at Alleghany County High School before heading to Pulaski County Middle School in 1977 and Christiansburg High School in 1981. In the early 1980s, the couple passed each other in the hallways at Christiansburg High when Julie worked part time there and at Blacksburg High. Over the years, the couple received their master's degrees.

Working for the same school system had its perks. Holidays and snow days became family time. Julie Grady had both of her children in class.

At school, Carl Grady served on curriculum committees. His wife focused energy on the classroom. She started a program in about 1994 to help students investigate their interests with mentors in the community.

Carl Grady thrived on teaching Advanced Placement calculus because it stimulated him. His own high school teachers had not been challenging enough.

Julie Grady found fulfillment in her regular-level classes: "That's really where my heart was."

But her enthusiasm reached to students of all abilities. Abbie Morgan, who took Grady's AP chemistry class this year, was so inspired by lessons that she may major in chemistry at Cornell University in the fall.

"She was just so excited about chemistry and just so excited to be teaching us, it just made the class so much fun," Morgan said.

In the early 1990s, Carl Grady did a two-year stint at Virginia Tech to fill in for a professor. The university was a nice change, but its emphasis was on research, and Grady preferred to teach.

The Gradys will miss their house in the Toms Creek basin. So will Cullen, who did much of the planting around the structure.

But Carl Grady said it won't be hard to leave the county.

"I actually feel wanted and appreciated - a lot more than in Montgomery County," he said about his new employer.

An antique replica of a school crossing guard waits to be moved from the couple's living room, along with boxes in the kitchen.

Julie Grady has enjoyed having families of students march through her classes, but she's ready for an adventure: "That's one thing that's so exciting - to think in three years, we don't know what we'll be doing."