HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah -- In some cases, working with your spouse isn’t always the best idea since it tends to mix the stresses of the workplace environment with life at home.
For Kayla Colfax and Joe Tincher, however, they wouldn’t have it any other way. In fact, it was how they met in the first place.
The married couple are former Soldiers-turned-civilians currently working together at the U.S. Army Medical Materiel Agency’s Medical Maintenance Operations Division at Hill Air Force Base, where they’ve been for the past five-plus years.
“It’s nice because you always have a built-in friend and partner,” Colfax said. “A lot of people don’t seem to think that … but ever since we’ve known each other, we’ve worked together. It just feels normal and I think it’s nice, personally.”
Colfax and Tincher first met in 2015 when they attended their advanced individual training in Virginia to become electronical equipment technicians. Following graduation from AIT, they were both stationed in Korea, where they later married.
“At that time, our MOS (military occupational specialty), 94Y, was sort of getting phased out and they asked us to pick a new MOS or we couldn’t leave,” Tincher laughed. “She wanted to go toward medical and I wanted to stay with electronics stuff, so we compromised and went to 68A.”
The 68A, or biomedical equipment specialist, MOS led the two to Fort Sam Houston in Texas, where they completed their AIT before being assigned to MMOD-Hill in 2018 through the Married Army Couples Program.
“I think it was easy for us because we had the same MOS,” Colfax said. “If we had different MOS’s, then it could get a bit tricky, but they put you as close together as they can.”
MMOD-Hill is one of USAMMA’s three stateside medical maintenance hubs, along with facilities in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania, and Tracy, California. Each MMOD serves as a technical center of excellence for different types of medical devices, with MMOD-Hill specializing in pulmonary, anesthesia and oxygen-concentrating equipment.
USAMMA is a direct reporting unit to Army Medical Logistics Command, the Army’s Life Cycle Management Command for medical materiel.
The couple both finished out their uniformed military careers at MMOD-Hill, with Colfax leaving service in 2019 and Tincher doing the same a couple years later. They both stayed on board as contractors, working until federal civilian slots opened to join the team fulltime.
They said they’ve enjoyed the fast-paced environment at MMOD-Hill, which played an integral support role during the COVID-19 pandemic response in 2020 and beyond.
During those times of high operational tempo, such as COVID-19 or traveling overseas to support missions at Army Prepositioned Stocks sites, it helps to have great coworkers -- military, civilians and contractors -- to lean on and learn from.
And it certainly doesn’t hurt when one of them is your spouse and biggest supporter.
“We’ve spent a lot of time here, met a lot of people and gone a lot of places,” Colfax said, reflecting on their time serving and working together in Utah. “It’s definitely a big part of our lives.”
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