The Harrington Family Foundation

Emily and Joey Harrington are sitting on the same sofa. Look quick.

"We don't see each other that much," Emily said. "He drops me off at work in the morning."

"About 7:30," Joey said. "And pick her up about 6:30."

This is during Harrington's offseason, when he may actually be around the couple's Morningside home, and not 45 miles north at Falcons headquarters in Flowery Branch. He's the quarterback. She's the heart transplant coordinator. This is not your quintessential NFL story.

"I hope not," Emily said. "I like this story."

You want a marriage? Try this one.

One week before they were to be wed — just a year and three months ago — Joey Harrington learned he had been cut by Miami. While on honeymoon in Kenya, two weeks later, he was told he'd been signed by Atlanta. He took Michael Vick's job in August, lost it in October, didn't play a down the last four games and, after telling the new coach he wanted to stay with the team, got cut.

One week before they were to be wed, Emily Hatten was working as a family nurse practitioner in a backwoods clinic in Dexter, Ore. (population: 2,270). Three weeks later, she was hunting for her first house a continent away in Atlanta while floating her resume. As the football season revved up, she landed a choice job with the Emory Transplant Center, orchestrating pre- and post-op plans for people about to get a new heart.

"We never had lived together," Joey said, "so our first experience as a married couple was to move across the country and ... here we go."

As if it were that simple. If nothing in life truly prepares a couple for marriage, truly nothing prepares newlyweds for the season from hell. Harrington's first five NFL seasons started and stopped by the year; in the 2007 season, it did so by the week.

He went from coach Bobby Petrino's best hope, after Vick's departure, to pariah after Byron Leftwich and then Chris Redman replaced him. Exposed to machinations of a franchise in true crisis — and a coach in over his head — Emily Harrington blanched.

"You're finding out what's happening week to week with your husband's career via the ESPN ticker," she said. "Joey has always been really good about leaving it behind. I found myself probably more emotional about it than I ever expected it to be.

"I know there are few jobs that truly aren't political, my own included. But it almost gets to a point where it's beyond who's going to give you the best chance of winning, when you're attacking someone's livelihood and someone's character."

After the first month, Harrington was second in the NFL in pass completion percentage. But when the Falcons' record hit 1-5 (with three losses by a touchdown or less), Petrino gave Harrington's job to Leftwich without bothering to tell Harrington. He learned of the decision from reporters.

"I couldn't let what Petrino was doing to me affect how I acted with everybody else. I almost had to become numb to it," he said. "So many people asked, 'Why aren't you more upset?' or 'I can't believe how you're dealing with this.' It was because, I won't say I expected it, but I went into every day expecting the unexpected, where nothing really surprised me.

"It was tough, to say the least."

At the same time, while the Falcons' following was falling out of love with its quarterback, the Harringtons were falling in love with Atlanta. Though they had both gone to Central Catholic High School in Portland — she was two years behind him — Emily, now 26, and Joey, 29, not only never dated in school, they never spoke.

But their mothers had become friends from helping out with the Friday night pregame dinners, and when Joey's college career at Oregon was over and he was on his own as a rookie in Detroit, Valerie Harrington played her hand. She passed Joey's e-mail address to Emily.

"I'm not ashamed to say that I got set up by my mom," Joey said.

Within months, they were a steady item. While finishing nursing school and then pursuing her master's degree in Portland, she found time between schoolwork and clinic shifts to travel to Joey's games. They were married March 10, 2007 — after 5 1/2 years of courtship — and a week before the Dolphins canned him. No sooner had they begun their lives together than they fell head-over-heels again for the appeals of Atlanta.

"We love this city. It reminds us of home," Joey said. "Our neighborhood, our neighbors have welcomed us from Day 1. We have a lot of things going for us here, and we both enjoy being part of this community."

That affection was surely challenged by the Falcons' new management team's decision to draft Boston College quarterback Matt Ryan and then grant him a six-year, $72 million contract. As if to prepare him before the draft, the team notified Harrington that if he wanted to remain a Falcon, it would be at a salary far less than his original two-year, $6 million deal.

"I said, 'Absolutely.' I want to be part of this team," Harrington said. "I went into coach [Mike] Smith's office and said, 'I love this team.' For the first time in my NFL career, I feel like I belong to something. I didn't feel like I belonged to a team since I left Oregon. And I want to be here."

The cut was substantial, down from the $2.5 million he was due in the second and final season of his original deal, to $1 million ($700,000 base salary and a $300,000 signing bonus). Having lost a starting job now in three cities, and then the salary slash, Harrington can hardly describe his career as in ascension.

"This is going on seven years," Emily said. "He deserves a break at some point."

You want a marriage? Try this one: one partner in career crisis, the other in professional fulfillment, two lives briefly paused on the sofa.

"We have a lot of things going for us here and we both enjoy being part of this community," Joey Harrington said. "You can't put a price tag on that.

"There's something to be said for being happy."