Photos by Ralph Freso
Steve and Jamie Kozimor stood by the bench where, a lifetime ago, everything changed. The bench on Grand Canyon University’s campus is flanked today by an ATM, though money has nothing to do with their story. After all, they became teachers.
“We met in 1976 on that bench outside the Fleming Library, what today is the Lope Shop (and adjacent Global Credit Union and its ATM), which is mind-blowing to me,” Steve said.
“This was our first conversation,” Jamie added. “He was sitting on the bench eating a bag of Doritos and an orange drink. I said, ‘Well, that looks like a healthy breakfast.’
“He still likes his Doritos.”
Steve doesn’t recall his reply that day but will say he found the love of his life on that bench. The GCU graduates married and had a son, Tyler Kozimor, who became an educator and earned his master’s degree at a much larger GCU in 2020, and in 2023, he became senior academic program specialist in the College of Education. Tyler’s wife, Dr. Alicia Kozimor, also earned her master’s degree (2017) and doctorate (2020) at GCU and became the college's faculty chair in 2021.
“It is exciting to see the legacy,” said Steve, a retired social studies teacher of more than 30 years at Tolleson Union High School. “Literally, they are working in the place I went to college. You don’t realize it at the time, how important decisions that you make have such lingering effects.”
A bag of Doritos becomes a GCU family, reminiscing on a sunny afternoon by a bench as the university soon wraps up its 75th anniversary celebrations over the past year with a gala on Feb. 21.
“When I came here, it was full circle, because this is where both of you met,” Tyler said. “So it feels like I am closing the loop.”
Steve and Jamie pulled out their student IDs from the 1970s, with photos of young faces and unruly hair of the time.
“He looks like John Belushi,” Jamie said.
“I didn’t take school very seriously,” Steve said.
What started, in Jamie’s description, as “shenanigans” by her future husband in college settled down nicely when they would cross what was then a barren field of weeds to go to chapel at the Baptist church, which today is Sunset Auditorium. The Grand Canyon College campus then was just a handful of buildings and a few hundred students.
“The little white chapel is really where I was centered,” said Steve, who drifted away from his intent to study the ministry. “But this campus and people here really anchored my faith. … Later on, I discovered a teaching gift and found the love of my life – the three things that emerged from my experience here at Grand Canyon.”
Jamie said she found in elementary education studies that Grand Canyon lived up to its reputation for training good teachers, and that foundational program still thrives today.
“Those quality people who sneak into your life can help guide you, which GCU has had,” she said. “One of the big things at the time was hands-on education. When we walked into the classroom, we were ready to go.”
After her 1980 graduation, Jamie became a K-12 teacher and reading tutor, while Steve graduated in 1979 and went on to teach at Tolleson Union High School. They married soon after.
So it seemed like destiny when Tyler enrolled at Northern Arizona University to become a teacher, though both he and his father never thought he would choose that path.
“But then there was a moment when I was helping a kid in an afterschool program, and they got it, that light went off,” Tyler said. “I remember going home that night, being so excited I couldn’t sleep. I remember thinking, even though it was one kid, I changed the world.”
In that afterschool program at Hopi Elementary School in Arcadia, he met Alicia, who was also working in the afterschool program while completing her NAU undergraduate degree. There was no Doritos involved. She often offered to help clean up at the end of the day, which added an extra 30 minutes to her work. He loved her dedication.
“Mom, I met the girl I am going to marry,” Jamie recalled her son saying then.
Tyler’s face reddened: “I guess I married the love of my life.”
The 2013 wedding ceremony at Disneyland by the wishing well “before we got caught but didn’t get thrown out” was the merger of another Kozimor duo of educators.
Alicia completed her master’s degree in 2017 at GCU and was working toward a doctorate, while both her father, Clinton Jackson, and husband Tyler also joined the Lopes family with graduate degrees.
“We love learning, and this way we could still be in the classroom and grow our careers,” Tyler said.
It’s astounding to their parents how the university grew. As they walked through crowds of students on campus wearing their purple Lopes attire, they pointed out where they went to zoology class together in a building that now holds the Theology department.
“When we were here, there was no online presence at all,” Jamie said.
“Well,” Steve added, “there was no internet.”
Though offline, the spirit was here.
Steve said he found his calling in teaching, his ministry. “That’s how I felt God was directing my life,” while later becoming pastor of the Phoenix Friends Church.
The Kozimors’ life as educators was a lot of hard work for limited pay, but they found support in each other.
“We know what it’s like in the trenches,” Steve said. “We know what is like to leave at 6:30 a.m. and get home at 6:30 p.m., dark when you get there, dark when you leave.”
“We’ve all been there,” Tyler said.
“They understand each other and know how to support each other,” Jamie said of Tyler and Alicia, “so I’m not surprised in their marriage that they are together.”
“And you, too,” Tyler told his parents. “It is fun to honor the both of you coming back here.”
They found firm ground at GCU, where they join Tyler and Alicia’s young children, Blake and Scout, to cheer at basketball games.
“When we go to schools and talk to teachers and student prospects, coming from the legacy of being at GCU, being a GCU student, we believe in the things we are saying,” Alicia said. “We say that GCU is a great school, and we mean it.”
“We are not only trying to alleviate the teacher shortage,” added Tyler, “we are trying to change the world here.”
Steve and Jamie paused outside the Lope Shop at a walkway brick inscribed with their names that Tyler and Alicia bought for them – not far from the bench where more than 48 years melted away.
Grand Canyon University senior writer Mike Kilen can be reached at [email protected]
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