Shifting Gears

For the McGehees, a dream house is lost…

- Veronica Theodoro

Even a former race car driver isn’t immune to the anxieties of home ownership. Just ask Robby McGehee. Back in 2011, he and his wife, Norma, found their dream home, put a contract on it…and then the nerves crept in: The couple still owned their house in Frontenac, and the prospect of owning two properties, if that property didn’t sell right away, felt like a risky endeavor to the 1999 Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year. And so, reluctuantly, the McGehees let go of the dream house on a contingency clause.

“It was really a bummer,” Robby recalls.

But to everyone’s surprise, the Frontenac house sold almost immediately. The couple tried again to buy the dream house, only to learn that it was under contract with another buyer—a childhood friend of Robby’s. Suddenly the five McGehees—Robby, Norma, and their 2-year-old triplets—were without a home of their own.

“Here I am,” says Robby, “I just sold my house in Frontenac. The house I really wanted, my dream house, was sold to somebody else, and now we’re kind of homeless.”

The couple moved into a loft off of a horse barn at the family farm, in Chesterfield, and bunked there for a “few hectic months” as they continued to house-hunt and the triplets transitioned from cribs to toddler beds. Then a friend suggested that they look at a 1917 house for sale in a Clayton neighborhood tucked away from the busyness of Big Bend and campus life at Washington University.

“The condition of the house was not fantastic,” says Robby, “but boy, the bones were just great.” Pulling into the driveway for the first time, Norma remembers thinking that the elegant, three-story home was meant to be. “Now, when I walked into the house, it was a different story,” she says, laughing at the memory.