Justin and Amanda Leonard’s origin story has all the makings of a Hollywood romantic comedy. He was a Texas-born PGA Tour golfer who spent 25 to 30 weeks of any given year on the road, and she was a marketing and public relations executive for a startup that had just been sold. After cashing out her stock options, Amanda purchased a townhouse two doors down from Justin’s in Dallas. Soon, mutual friends began conspiring to set them up.
You know what they say about the best-laid plans: they often go awry. Justin was usually gone for weeks at a time on tour, and Amanda had just gotten out of a relationship, so she wasn’t eager to start anything new. When they were finally in the same place at the same time, Justin asked Amanda if she wanted to grab a beer sometime. It seemed harmless enough, so she said “okay” once, and then twice after that first beer never came to pass.
The thing is, Justin never wanted to go for a beer with Amanda at all. He wanted Amanda to let her guard down so he could eventually ask her to dinner, which he eventually did. Fortunately for him, Amanda said yes, and they had such a good time on that first date, they talked until 2 a.m.
“I called my mom the next day and she asked me about my date,” Amanda recalls. “And I told her, ‘I have no idea if I will see this guy again, if we’ll be friends, or if he’s the guy I’m supposed to marry, but there was something different about last night.’ It was like nothing else I had ever encountered before.”
Then Justin left town for a tournament. That is how things played out for the next four months—getting together, enduring weeks apart, connecting again—until they spent a make-or-break long weekend in Telluride, Colorado that showed them they were meant to be together. Still, Justin wanted to be sure Amanda could handle his not-so-ordinary existence, so he waited a full calendar year before popping the question. After marrying in 2002, and starting a family, the Leonards have been committed to seeing the world together—and showing their children the importance of giving to those in need.
“When I first met Amanda, I liked that she didn’t know a lot about golf and was just interested in me for who I was, not what I did,” Justin says. “I had had some success up until that point, and [people only liking me because I was a golfer] was a concern of mine. But with Amanda, I just loved spending time with her. She has always made me want to be a better version of myself. And I always felt like I was the best version of myself when I was with her.”
Amanda, meanwhile, was drawn to how humble and sweet Justin was. “The more I got to know him, the more I respected and admired not just what he had accomplished, but how caring and genuine he was,” she says. “I felt safe with him and immediately knew I could trust him.”
Trust was important. After all, as soon as they returned from their honeymoon, the Leonards began traveling for Justin’s PGA Tour schedule. Their journeys to his tourneys didn’t stop even when their family grew to include four kids.
“We were a traveling circus,” Amanda says. “We would pull up with our car seats and our double stroller, and Justin would go play. But we had it down. The PGA goes to pretty much the same cities every year, and you’re able to get your bearings and know where you’re going to stay. Justin was right to make sure I was okay with this lifestyle before we got married because it definitely takes a very independent partner to do this.”
Not that she didn’t love doing it, Amanda says. All their best friends and their kids were on tour too. On the one hand, the Leonard children were exposed to kids who spoke different languages and had different perspectives. On the other, as those kids grew older, it was harder on Justin to take part in the usual events —recitals and games—that are part and parcel of being a parent. So, he retired in 2015, and the family sold their house in Dallas and moved to Aspen for seven years, delighting in being together in a “cool little mountain town.” Justin kept his hand in the sport he loves by providing commentary for the Golf Channel, but as his sons became avid golfers, he just couldn’t stay retired. He decided to join the senior tour.
In the summer of 2022, the family moved to Tequesta, which was appealing for its small, local feel. Because Justin was playing golf again, the year-round sunshine and proximity to Amanda’s family added to the draw.
“After living in the outdoor beauty of Colorado, we felt we needed some kind of outdoor element to kind of fill that gap a little bit, so we thought, ‘Okay, let’s move to the beach,’” Justin says. “Though we don’t live on the beach, we live close enough to it where we can replace the mountains and the skiing we used to do with watersports and going to the beach.”
Amanda likes that they’re living in Tequesta—a hidden gem where neighbors wave at each other when they take the trash out, people are walking their dogs, and kids are outside playing and riding their bikes. Three of their kids are in college now, and their youngest is a sophomore at The Benjamin School, which is Amanda’s high school alma mater. As their nest becomes emptier, the Leonards have enjoyed feeling part of a welcoming community. But for them, being part of the community isn’t just about soaking up the goodwill around them. It includes giving back to people, too.
“Since our kids have been little, we’ve always taught them the importance of looking around at the rest of the world and not just giving back to it, but serving others,” says Amanda, adding that they have taken their brood on mission trips to places like Zambia and Costa Rica.
While traveling to countries like Zambia opened their kids’ eyes to other children going hungry, Amanda says they wanted to impress upon them that it was happening in America, too. Currently, about one in eight American children live in a household that does not have consistent access to affordable, nutritious food. Those who rely on free or reduced meals at school struggle to get their nutritional needs met during the weekend, or the summer.
Enter Blessings in a Backpack (BIB), a national nonprofit that provides weekend food to schoolchildren who receive free or reduced lunches. The Leonards have been involved with BIB for more than a decade, after learning about it from the PGA Tour Wives Association. They started their own chapter in Dallas, where they worked with the organization and its vendors to provide children with the food they needed.
When they moved to Tequesta, the Leonards worked with The Benjamin School to establish a new BIB chapter. Outside of a popcorn fundraiser, students can create their own donation pages where friends and family members can donate $25 to $50 at a time. Students use that money to buy food before packing it up and bringing it to 200 students in Riviera Beach and 160 in Jupiter. It’s a very hands-on affair, Amanda says, where the students oversee everything from the inventory to the available funds and social media posts.
In April, Justin and other PGA pros will hold a fundraiser for Blessings in a Backpack at The Bear’s Club, where they offer 20-minute short game lessons to no more than 25 people. The goal is to keep the lessons intimate and accessible, so participants can ask questions along the way. The 2025
fundraiser raised enough to support programs at both schools served by BIB’s Benjamin School chapter.
“These are 15- and 16-year-old boys for the most part,” Amanda says of The Benjamin School’s BIB group. “We continue to keep them involved and push them to see where this can go. The goal is to be able to build it up and pass it down as this current group moves through their high school years, and hopefully create something that will live a long time here in South Florida.”
As long as the Leonards are involved, it’s sure to be a hole in one.
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