Stephanie Goodman was in her early teens when she declared, “I’m going to marry Mark Clifford one day.”
Your friend and teammate Whitney Braswell remembers it well.
“We were in middle school and Mark was that cool, older college guy and she was totally in love with him,” said Ms. Braswell.
Spoiler alert: Ms. Goodman knew what she was talking about. Your teen crush would actually stay, even though it would last over 20 years.
Mrs. Goodman, now 35, was 12 years old when she first saw Mr. Clifford perform. They were both competitive cloggers, a type of folk dance. In the United States, the constipation came from the Appalachian Mountains. And while it may look like tap dancing to the untrained eye, there are differences, although there are now a lot more crossovers between the two forms. Clog dance is based on influences from Wales, the Irish lineage, African folk and square dance. Despite its name, it is not listed in clogs in the US. While it was performed for violin and banjo in the early years, routines for pop and hip-hop are regularly choreographed today.
Mr. Clifford, now 44, is known throughout the world of constipation and beyond. He started an all-male clogging troop called All That! The troupe took part in NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” which took second place in season one, for two seasons, and performed in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and internationally. Four members of All That !, including Mr. Clifford, appear six nights a week on a variety show at the Carolina Opry: Calvin Gilmore Theater in Myrtle Beach, SC, where Mr. Clifford and Mrs. Goodman now live. (The show took a month-long hiatus during the pandemic shutdown, but then returned and is currently on winter break.) The troupe also takes on corporate functions and cruise lines.
Mr. Clifford is the youngest of three children to the late Vincent Clifford and Marie Clifford who lived in Charleston, SC, where his father lived. Vincent Clifford spent 26 years in the Navy and then worked in real estate.
Marie Clifford had been a tap dancer, and when her son showed an interest in constipation, she encouraged him.
“I liked drums and the sound your feet made with them,” said Mr. Clifford, who was first inspired by older boys.
He was only 5 years old when he started constipating, and at the age of 6 he started taking karate lessons. As he quickly studied both, he realized how the martial arts affected the fluidity of his movements in dance and vice versa. When he was 8 years old, he was on his way to becoming a child star in the world of competitive constipation. Mr. Clifford was not that academic and focused entirely on constipation and karate. (He’s also a third degree brown belt, just short of a black belt.) His hours outside of school were consumed by competitions and the trips that require them.
“It seemed natural to me,” said Mr. Clifford. “When I dance, I feel like a top flowing over the floor.”
Mr. Clifford saw no college in his future. But then he said Mars Hill College near Asheville, NC had offered him a constipation scholarship to lead their team, the Bailey Mountain Cloggers. He graduated with a degree in corporate communications and then turned pro, teaching and making educational videos, and starting the troupe.
Ms. Goodman started constipating when she was 10 years old. She and her brother are the children of Barry Goodman, who served in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and worked in upholstery, and Donna Goodman, who grew up on a small farm in Granite Falls, NC The family was a regular in Sims Country Bar-B-Que, a restaurant and live music venue with a large dance floor in Granite Falls.
Soon they joined a team: the Sims Country Cloggers. “My mother and I danced together on many stages,” said Ms. Goodman, who competed in the 2002 and 2003 Junior Olympic Games for constipation.
“I didn’t do any other extracurricular activities at school,” she said. “As with any sport, if it’s your passion, you go to rehearsals all the time and then practice in your free time.”
Ms. Goodman also became a constipation teacher.
In those early days, Ms. Goodman recorded the men’s solo division on the family camcorder in competitions, particularly Mr. Clifford.
When Mrs. Goodman was 15 years old, she shyly asked Mr. Clifford for his autograph; She has a photo of them together from this exchange.
In 2003, Mr. Clifford was teaching a master class for Ms. Goodman’s team. She was 19 now, he was 28, and while he remembered her as one of the young cloggers with the camera, he couldn’t help but notice her beauty. He questioned her.
Though she’d waited years for this moment, it was her star crush, not someone to date in real life. She refused.
“I whistled,” she said. “I was really intimidated.”
While she immediately regretted it in retrospect, Ms. Goodman now says, “We were both very busy. Our stars hadn’t aligned yet. “
In the years to come, they each met someone, got married, and then divorced.
In 2011 they made friends on Facebook. It was a social media friendship with little interaction. She always wished him all the best before he went on television, for example, but nothing more.
Finally, Mr Clifford questioned her again in 2012, though she still remembered having been turned down from her years earlier. This time Mrs. Goodman, now withdrawn from constipation and living in her hometown, did not shrink back.
On their first date, they had dinner and strolled through Myrtle Beach’s Grande Dunes Marina. “The second time we met it was like we were old friends or in another life together,” said Ms. Goodman. “It was like, ‘oh, there you are.'”
After a few dates, Mrs. Goodman moved to Myrtle Beach.
“I wasn’t really surprised, I thought it was cute,” said Ms. Braswell, Ms. Goodman’s former team-mate. “He makes her incredibly happy and he really encouraged her to pursue her own dreams too.”
They soon moved in together, first in an apartment and later bought a house. You have a dog and three cats.
But Mr. Clifford’s divorce had deterred him from marriage.
“Let us be independent together,” he put it.
“We had a great life and I felt fulfilled,” said Ms. Goodman, “so I didn’t mean to pressure him.”
But over the years, Mr. Clifford found himself changing his tune.
“She’s my first thought and my last thought and really my only thought all day,” he said. “I found the person who makes me happy all the time.”
In August 2020, he suggested having dinner again for the first time since the closure. They ate in the same restaurant as on their first date and strolled along the marina again. This time he suggested using a bespoke ring.
When looking at dates and locations for a small wedding, nothing about planning was easy.
“Things usually agree with us,” said Mr. Clifford. “And the wedding didn’t take place like that.”
They had been on a cruise in January 2020 and fell in love with Puerto Rico. With the blessings of their families, they decided to flee. They settled on January 21, 2021, and when Mr. Clifford flipped through previous photos on his cell phone, he saw that they had been in San Juan on that exact date the year before.
That day they married Tim Blackford of Peace Love Weddings and a Minister of Universal Life while standing outside the walls of the citadel of Castillo San Felipe del Morro in San Juan.
“He will go out of his way to make me happy and do everything for me,” said Mrs. Goodman, who takes Mr. Clifford’s name. She recently completed a certificate in cybersecurity and is participating in a yoga teacher training program.
“He’s a master of grand gestures,” she said. “But at the end of the day, if it’s just us, even if he’s seen me the worst, he loves me for me.”
That day
When January 21, 2021
Where In the citadel Castillo San Felipe del Morro in San Juan.
The wedding The couple had a ceremony with Bible verses woven in as friends and family watched on Facebook. The only living guest was an iguana who passed by. After they were declared married, the audience cheered.
The reception After the ceremony, the couple took a stroll through Old San Juan and then went out on tacos.
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