Between Us: Hilary & Kevin

Some stories start with an engagement ring. Hilary and Kevin’s started with a fake one.

Long before they were married—and long before Squash Blossom became part of their lives—they met while working at Neiman Marcus in Austin. Hilary was working in designer fashion, while Kevin managed Precious Jewelry.

Hilary remembers first noticing him from across the room: tall, impeccably dressed, fresh from New York, in a fitted Prada suit with no socks. Very Kevin.

During the months leading up to the store opening, the team would visit other retailers around Austin. One day, Hilary and Kevin walked into a jewelry store together and pretended they were a couple shopping for an engagement ring, simply to see how the salesperson handled the experience.

They weren’t even dating yet.

Years later, the pretend engagement became a real one.

A Love for Things With a Story

By the time Kevin actually proposed, Hilary had one request: she didn’t want the same engagement ring everyone else seemed to have.

Kevin understood.

He proposed the night before Thanksgiving with an antique Fred Leighton ring dating to 1910. Hidden within the piece was a tiny detail that could only be discovered with a loupe.

When they arrived at Kevin’s parents’ home in Dallas the next day, his father, Steve, couldn’t wait to show Hilary the details of the ring and tell her its story.

For Hilary, that became part of what made the piece so meaningful—not only what it represented between her and Kevin, but the history it carried before them.

“This piece is like something so special, and nobody else will ever have it… it’s old and it’s mine.”

It’s a sentiment that feels particularly fitting today. Jewelry in Hilary and Kevin’s world has never simply been about something beautiful. It’s about the people, places, memories, and stories attached to it.

Finding Their Way to Vail

Vail was part of Hilary and Kevin’s story long before Squash Blossom.

They had been visiting friends and spending time in the mountains since they were dating. Eventually, an invitation from a friend—“Want to be our neighbor?”—gave them the push to do something bigger.

They moved their family from Houston to Vail. Hilary continued working remotely, Kevin became a full-time ski instructor, and on the very day they moved, Hilary found out she was pregnant with their second son, Nolan.

Then Kevin stumbled upon Squash Blossom.

He began working with the original owners part-time. Slowly, the conversation changed from “Do you want to work here?” to “Do you want to manage the store?” and eventually:

“Do you want to buy the store?”

Hilary was still working in corporate America and traveling almost every week while raising two young boys. She wanted something more rooted in the community and more compatible with the life they were trying to build.

Together, they took another leap of faith.

Hilary cashed out her 401(k), they purchased Squash Blossom, and the rest—as she puts it—is history.

Building Squash Blossom Together

Hilary and Kevin bring very different things to the store.

Kevin grew up around jewelry, later worked in his family’s jewelry business, and is a trained gemologist. Hilary came from fashion, buying, marketing, sales, and a career spent understanding people.

Working alongside Kevin gave Hilary an entirely new appreciation for what he knows.

She laughs that hearing him casually talk about rubies and gemstones while standing there in a T-shirt or ski gear is “kind of sexy, honestly.”

And working together has changed their relationship in other ways, too.

Most couples leave for work in the morning and meet again at the end of the day. Hilary and Kevin get to see how the other leads, solves problems, interacts with people, and handles the hundreds of little things that go into running a family business.

For Hilary, seeing that side of Kevin has made her appreciate him even more.

There are challenges to working with your husband, she admits. But Squash Blossom has always been a labor of love—one they’ve learned to build together while also raising Stevie and Nolan.

More Than Jewelry

That shared journey became especially meaningful in 2020.

When Vail suddenly shut down, Hilary and Kevin were no longer backed by corporate jobs. Squash Blossom was their small business, and everything suddenly felt uncertain.

At home, they still had gemstone beads from jewelry Kevin had previously made under Stevie’s Jewel Box, a collection named after his father.

Hilary began turning those beads into $48 Hope Bracelets, creating something people could wear as a reminder of strength and connection. Within the first month, she recalls selling approximately $14,000 worth and donating a portion of each sale to support their local community.

It became one of those early moments that defined what Squash Blossom could mean beyond selling jewelry.

Their Squash Blossom

Today, Hilary and Kevin want the store to feel very different from the intimidating jewelry store people might imagine.

Beautiful things? Absolutely.

But also gemstones discussed in ski clothes. Friends stopping in. Designers becoming part of the family. A backgammon board sitting outside. People walking through Vail Village and ending up in the store simply because they want to say hello.

This summer, Hilary and Kevin put a little bistro table and backgammon board outside Squash Blossom. One day, a father and son sat there playing together for four or five hours.

That, to them, is part of the point.

Creating somewhere people actually want to be.

And when Hilary talks about what she wants Squash Blossom to be, she says it best herself:

“It’s okay to try something. It’s okay to take risks and do it, and also, like, be you. Like, you don’t need to be anybody else. Everybody else is already taken. So not being afraid to dress the way you want to dress and wear the things you want to wear and just doing the things that you want to do—that’s kind of what I want Squash Blossom to be—a place where you come from all over the world, and you get to have this amazing experience. You get to feel like you.”

At the heart of it all is something even simpler:

“I want people to be seen and heard and loved.”

Hilary + Kevin, Off the Clock

Of course, life together isn’t all jewelry.

They’re a family of game players—backgammon, cribbage, hearts, and Fort Worth Gin all make appearances.

Who wins at backgammon?

Hilary reluctantly admits it’s usually Kevin.

Although she would like the record to show that she recently beat him six or seven times in a row.

Their tastes are different, too. Kevin has a reputation in the family for being a trendsetter, while Hilary has always preferred simply doing her own thing.

And perhaps that’s one of the things she loves most about him.

“My favorite thing about Kevin is that he doesn’t give a fuck.”

For Hilary, that’s Kevin: completely himself, regardless of what anyone else thinks. She calls it both “super cool” and, naturally, “annoying.”

A Life They Built in Vail

What began with two people working at Neiman Marcus in Austin eventually became a marriage, two boys, a move across the country, and a jewelry store in the mountains neither of them originally planned to own.

And somewhere along the way, Vail became home.

For Hilary, it’s the community that has kept them here: walking through the Village and knowing someone along the way, supporting other small-business owners, raising their boys surrounded by nature, skiing, hiking, meeting friends for après, and still looking outside after all these years and feeling grateful to live here.

Squash Blossom has become part of that life.

It’s a jewelry store, yes.

But it’s also Hilary and Kevin: their different backgrounds, their shared love of people, their willingness to take risks, their family, their friends, their designers, and the community they’ve built around it.

It’s a labor of love, a little bit of risk, and a whole lot of them.

Happy Birthday, Hilary & Kevin. 🤍