Sitting down for lunch Tuesday with her sister at a Chinese restaurant in her small southwest Missouri town, Heather Harman-Michael pulled up Instagram for a quick scroll.
She gasped. Oh, the joy! One post alone gave her that little I-can’t-believe-it-finally-happened moment, right there inside the Korean Garden restaurant in Willard, Missouri.
It’s a moment that no doubt played out similarly around the world.
As you’ve heard some 100 times by now, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, of the Kansas City Chiefs, are engaged. Made official in an Instagram post Tuesday afternoon complete with proposal photos and the words: “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”
The Swiftie in Harman-Michael — her favorite album is Red and top song is “My Tears Ricochet” — immediately texted the news to two family group chats and one with her colleagues at Willard Public Schools, a district about 160 miles southeast of Kansas City. She also texted friends and joked that she felt like Paul Revere telling everyone the news.
Then, and this happened pretty quickly, the communications major in her kicked into high gear. What Harman-Michael put into play next resulted in something that’s gotten thousands of reactions and more than 170 shares on Facebook and has garnered accolades for creativity and spot on social media marketing.
“I knew we have to capitalize on this,” said Harman-Michael, 29, the communications director for Willard Schools, the person in charge of marketing and social media for the district. “This is such a big moment … a big social media moment.
“I told my sister, ‘The first school district who can take this and run with it is going to go viral.”
And run with it she did.
While sitting at the restaurant, she texted Daniel Davis, the district’s high school principal. With this being her fourth year in the district, she said she knew that “we have a ton of married couples.”
Do we have this combination? An English teacher married to a gym teacher?
Davis admitted Wednesday that after getting that first text he was a bit confused. Then, he said, his “very excited building secretary” told him about the Taylor and Travis announcement. And after talking to Harman-Michael, he said he loved the idea of “trying to have a parody post regarding their engagement.”
“We are all big Chiefs fans down here,” Davis told The Star in a message. “And so understanding this is something culturally that would be entertaining within our school community,” he was all in.
Not thinking it would go beyond Willard, a town of about 5,000 people with nine schools, about 4,200 total students and 700 staff members.
Davis couldn’t find exactly what the communications director was looking for. No English teacher married to a gym teacher. But he did have other couples inside the building. Even more were married to staffers in the district, at other buildings. Davis could rattle off about a dozen couples.
“I was like, ‘Well, it’s too good a moment to not do something,” Harman-Michael said, of what she in her mind Tuesday afternoon. So, she thought, “Why don’t we just do all of them? Let’s just open it up to all of our married couples, and I’ll just call it ‘Willard’s Version.’”
See what Harman-Michael did there? ‘Willard’s version?’
When Swift didn’t own her music, she re-recorded the first six albums and labeled them “Taylor’s version.” But then, earlier this year, she bought all of her music back.
Creating the post
Just before 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, as the Internet exploded with the celebrity news, the communications director sent an email to Willard staff members telling them she had an “odd request.”
“... You may have seen the news that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are engaged,” Harman-Michael wrote. “They posted pictures with the caption, “Your English Teacher is getting married to your Gym Teacher.”
She explained she wanted to create a social media post that “highlights married couples who BOTH work at Willard Public Schools.” She asked those couples to send her photos.
The pics started coming in, delighting Harman-Michael. And within minutes, she started using Canva to photoshop the pics into the garden backdrop in the photos announcing the engagement of Taylor and Travis.
“It was super easy,” she said. “I just threw the photos in there, removed the background from the photos they sent me and then just placed them in the frame. “
By 2:55 p.m., roughly three hours after the communications director first learned of the pending marriage, she had 16 photos and the post up on Facebook. It read:
“In case you missed it: Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are engaged! Not to make this about us, but.......
“We’re calling this album “your English teacher and gym teacher are getting married” — Willard’s Version.”
And one by one, there they were, the married couples of Willard Public Schools. Thirty minutes after the first post went up, Harman-Michael added a 17th photo, of two middle school teachers who hadn’t heard about the parody and wanted to be a part.
Included in the post were:
* Your Technology Director and High School Librarian are married. (And they were reading a book about the Chiefs, photoshopped into the garden of flowers where Travis proposed.”)
* Your Maintenance Director and Middle School Kitchen Manager are married.
*Your Director of Willard School Police and your Intermediate South Librarian are married.
*Your Middle School Behavior Interventionist and your Intermediate North Music Teacher are married.
And then there was Harman-Michael’s first co-conspirator — Principal Davis. He is married to a Kindergarten teacher at North Elementary.
‘Wins the Internet’
As of Wednesday afternoon, about 24 hours after it first went on Facebook, the post had been shared 170 times, had more than 2,000 likes and 158 comments.
“I knew that it had potential,” Harman-Michael said. “But I’m so pleasantly surprised and ecstatic with the engagement that it’s gotten so far.”
As one commenter put it: “Now that’s social media marketing!!!!!!”
Added another: “This wins the internet today!” And a “Well played Willard!”
Others directed their praise to the idea itself and the execution.
“This is such a clever idea,” one woman wrote. “Whoever came up with it needs a raise. Well done!”
Harman-Michael laughed at that last one and jokingly said that she’s told people that comments like that will be filed away in what she calls her “deserves a raise folder.”
Davis, the high school principal, said the director of communications does a great job of “posting relevant information that connects our school community, parents and businesses.
“She was able to find a quick connection to pop culture that’s important to the people within our community,” Davis said. “... As Chiefs fans we love Travis Kelce.”
One commenter seemed to second that praise:
“Best advertisement for school is a family affair and done with amazing SWIFTness! A touchdown for sure!”