Asheville couple get NYT mention

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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From a home-and-garden story in the New York Times: 

HOW do you get a house that is perfectly calibrated to your needs and sensibilities for only $150,000? Well, it helps if your lifelong best friend is an architect and partner in a design-build firm, one in which the architects are also experienced contractors.

Alison Threatt, 36, grew up in Winston-Salem, N.C., where she met Yumiko Foust in the third grade. As teenagers, Ms. Threatt recalls, the two were quiet girls who played piano duets. “For us, an ideal Friday evening was listening to Harry Connick Jr., and going out and drinking tea.”

A soft-spoken woman, Ms. Threatt graduated from the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, and became a nomad, living in Poland, Ecuador, Benin and Quebec. But always, she stayed in touch with her dearest friend because, “I’m an only child, so I think, for me, Yumiko is the closest person I have in my life as a sister.”

Her friend, meanwhile, studied architecture at Virginia Tech, where she met her future husband, Tom Virant. The Virants eventually settled in Asheville, N.C., and formed a business partnership designing and building houses.