The Love Story of a Visually-Impaired Runner and the Guide Who Helped Him See the World
The tether ties them together, the two runners from two corners of the country, with two separate stories but just one sense of sight between them. One guides the other as they both clutch the cloth; if they never let it go, they’ll cross any finish line in front of them.
New Yorkers Anthony Butler, 31, and Jessie Rix, 29, have tugged on that tether in places as picturesque as Paris, where in 2017 they completed the Marathon de Paris, pounding the city’s historic pavements stride for stride. The race course weaves through some of the world’s true architectural wonders: The Arc de Triomphe. The Luxor Obelisk. The Eiffel Tower. The kinds of sacred sites you have to see to believe.
In Paris, though, it fell on Rix to paint such scenes for Butler, who is visually impaired. That isn’t always an easy task for the reserved Rix. But she does her best.
“Anything that I’m seeing, even if it’s someone wearing something silly on the course, I’ll describe it to Anthony, because I want him to share that memory with me,” says Rix. “Whether he sees it or he doesn’t, as long as he’s there, that’s all that matters.”
They’ve been running like this, partners connected to each other, for two and a half years. Rix, an introverted merchandising strategist, guides Butler’s feet on foreign roads, filling in the necessary blanks—Hurdle ahead! The Louvre to your left!—while his other senses pick up the slack. Butler, a social worker, is in turn a jester who finds cracks in Rix’s shell, busting jokes and breaking rules as they log miles and sweat toward common goals.
The duo began as running buddies: He was the gregarious, visually-impaired guy from the Bronx, she the quiet Midwestern girl assigned to help him see his city in a new way. But in time, they blossomed into something more with each sprint through Central Park. It was almost like a movie.
Indeed, their story is script-worthy, even if the third act remains unwritten. Because for Butler and Rix, it took a lot of living on their own to eventually become tethered.
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He wasn’t a bad kid; he just did bad stuff. Growing up, Butler earned decent grades, but he earned trips to the principal’s office just as often. “I was bored,” he says, “so I got into a lot of trouble.” Skipping school gave way to trespassing, which led to dealing drugs.
Using his paychecks from McDonald’s, where his dad was a general manager—“For my eighth grade graduation, I thought I was getting a present, but instead, he gave me a uniform,” Butler says—he bought and sold weed. After getting the boot from five different high schools, he picked up his GED in lieu of graduating and continued flipping burgers and bud.
Still, Butler had ambition. To pay for medical administrative assistant school, he scored other jobs, including a sales associate position at Swatch, the Swiss watchmaker. He peddled the luxury timepieces like a pro; on a single day in September 2008, he sold 175 watches in an hour to a bus full of Brazilian tourists. Not bad for a 20-year-old kid working on commission. It made Butler hungry for more.
Later that evening, Butler caught a train back home to the Bronx, where he hoped to make another sale in the neighborhood. But as he was hanging with his friends, another hot-tempered crew approached them, yelling about some long-simmering beef. Butler scrambled to defuse the rapidly escalating situation.
“I’m pretty sure all of us have drugs on us,” he remembers saying. “So if you keep making noise, the cops will come, and none of us are going to make any money. Just chill.”
His plea was futile. From the corner of his eye, Butler saw a member of the crew move behind a car, and that’s when bullets flew. One went straight through his left leg and into his right. Stunned, Butler staggered back against a wall and took another bullet from a second shooter. This time, it entered his head, above his left eyebrow, and exited through his right temple. In an instant, everything went black, the result of shredded retinas.
“Oh my god,” he thought. “This is it.”
The cops arrived first and the ambulance second. Butler, who had multiple warrants out for his arrest for skipping court dates, woke up the next morning handcuffed to a hospital bed. He laid there for several days, fumbling around in his head and in the dark. When a judge finally showed up to clear his record, Butler—who could walk despite the bullet still lodged in his right leg—left the hospital clinging to the small sliver of hope that he might someday regain his vision.
To speed up the process, he put his faith in fruit. “I tried eating carrots and blueberries,” he says. No such luck: A month after the shooting, doctors told Butler his eyes were damaged beyond repair. He’d never see again.
“That was the first time I really broke down and cried,” Butler says. But the tears signaled more resignation than despair. “I’ve done a lot of f----- up s--- in my life. If you live in the streets, it’ll catch up to you in one way or another. You gotta figure that s--- out.”
His first move was to North Carolina, where his mom lived. But on the day he was set to head south, he realized he wasn’t ready to leave New York, where his friends were helping him recover. So he canceled his January 15, 2009 flight to Charlotte—the same one, eerily enough, that went into the Hudson River. “That’s how I knew this is where I’m supposed to be,” Butler says.
So he stayed put, bouncing between buddies’ apartments as he acclimated to his new life. Navigating New York as a visually-impaired man wasn’t easy, but he relied on strangers to help him cross streets and ride trains.
Butler spent the better part of two years at Chelsea Foyer, a supportive housing shelter that prepared him to live independently, go back to school, and start a career. And that’s what he did, landing his own digs and earning degrees from the New School (a Bachelor of Fine Arts) and New York University (a Master of Social Work).
Life was falling into place for Butler. But he had fallen out of shape.
The former basketball player tried going to the gym, but it was tough to recruit reliable workout partners. “And I just wasn’t around anyone else with a disability,” he says.
In search of a solution, Butler asked a social worker for her advice. She suggested group activities like biking, rowing, and even karate, but none of them quite fit. And then she offered another option: “How about Achilles?”
She wasn’t a shut-in; she was just shy. It was easy for Rix to keep to herself in her hometown of Fergus Falls, Minnesota (population: 13,783), where the closest neighbor lived a mile up the street. Though she tried her hand at hoops, running suited her much better.
Though Rix enjoyed the company of her track teammates, she especially loved getting lost on her town’s rural roads. “When I ran, I only heard the birds and the trees,” she says. “As an introverted person, I could really thrive. It was very therapeutic.”
But as she approached adulthood, Rix started to feel a strong force pulling her in another direction. “You always want what you can’t have. I would dream of running across the Brooklyn Bridge instead of in the middle of a cornfield.”
New York was calling her name, and Fergus Falls wasn’t the right fit for someone who wanted to pursue fashion. So in 2012, Rix found her way to the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising (LIM) in New York City. Running kept her grounded amidst the crazy transition.
“Here in New York, where you have all this noise and people around you every minute of every day, running is my outlet to have that quiet space again,” Rix says. “I’m proud of where I come from, and I don’t ever want to lose that. This really helps connect me with [my past].”
The only problem? Back home, Rix knew other runners. In the Big Apple, she didn’t have anyone with whom she could train or race. She once tagged along with a track club practicing in Central Park, but “it ended up being the most intense workout of [her] life.”
Her breaking point came in the 2015 New York City Marathon. She prepped with long late-night runs by herself, growing more miserable with each mile. Then, halfway through the race, she nearly passed out from not eating enough, and begrudgingly finished the rest of the race. What should’ve been a triumphant day was instead a disappointment.
“You know what? I did it,” Rix remembers thinking. “I’ll be fine if I never do this again.”
If Rix could no longer get her kicks from running, she’d have to look elsewhere. Maybe volunteering was the answer. “Because I work in an industry that’s so materialistic, I needed some more value and substance in my life,” she says.
While browsing opportunities on NewYorkCares.org, Rix came across a name that looked familiar: Achilles. She had seen members from the organization sport their bright shirts while standing in Central Park, in the same spot where she started her daily runs.
“Well,” she said to herself, “I guess I’ll just show up.”
Achilles International, founded in 1983 by the first amputee to finish the New York City Marathon, is a nonprofit that helps disabled runners train for and compete in races by pairing them with able-bodied supporters and volunteers. In the summer of 2014, Butler arrived at his first run with the Manhattan chapter unprepared, but ready for anything.
He didn’t have a tether, so a female volunteer ripped off her shirt for him to use. (“That was dope,” Butler says.) She also teased something else: “I met my husband here. Maybe you can meet your girlfriend.”
That wouldn’t be Kate Dixon, Butler’s first real guide and friend through Achilles. Dixon was also trying to break into running, and they struck up a kinship over their lack of credentials. Before long, Butler had a partner who not only kept him accountable—calling him to make sure they both showed up to designated training days—but also helped him build endurance, progressing from a mile each time out, to 6-mile loops around Central Park, to their first half marathon together in 2015.
In addition to Dixon, Butler also became pals with several other guides, and soon enough, their group runs swelled in numbers. “Achilles gave me that sense of community, like I was going to church,” Butler says.
Butler’s new crew didn’t just take over New York; they also jetted to marathons in countries like Canada and Cuba. Before he joined Achilles, Butler had barely traveled outside his city. “I’d never even been on an airplane,” he says. “Now, I have a whole new perspective.”
As much as his world had changed, Butler’s single status still hadn’t. But on a spring afternoon in 2016, a new guide attended her first Achilles run and immediately gravitated toward Butler. “I noticed him right away,” Rix says. “Here was this good-looking guy who was laughing and having the time of his life with this big group around him.”
She joined in on their run: four miles at Butler’s 10-minute pace. By the end, she was hooked on their good vibes. “It was so nice to see people genuinely happy to be together,” Rix says. “I didn’t even know that existed anymore.”
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The group’s ringleader soon started booking one-on-one sweat sessions—at 5 a.m., to boot—with its new member. “She was sweet, soft-spoken, and just kept to her word,” Butler says of Rix. He was attracted to her personality and enjoyed their postrun brunches and bar hangs, but there was a small snag: She was already dating someone. “So I didn’t push it,” he says.
But that fling was fading, and Rix, too, was falling for her friend. “Anthony was there for me through all the ups and downs that I was going through,” she says. “He was so easy to confide in, and it was a natural progression. Once that relationship ended, everything just fell into place.”
Besides, Rix says, Butler—also known as Bright Eyes—had one big advantage over her ex.
“The other guy wasn’t a runner.”
Watch: Anthony Butler and Jessie Rix discuss their relationship.
They still rise for runs before dawn in Central Park, only now they don’t have to call each other to wake up in the morning. Last summer, Rix moved into Butler’s Harlem apartment after a year of dating. They already spent most of their time together, so shacking up made sense.
Their home life, Butler says, is simple: “We chill, laugh, and that’s it. We’ll watch a lot of 90 Day Fiancé, and once in a while, we’ll go out for drinks. But for the most part, we just run a lot.”
They’ve lost track of how many races they’ve done together. But Butler wants to meet every Achilles chapter, which explains the pair’s packed travel schedule. In January, for example, Rix guided Butler to a 2:34:13 finish time in the Houston Half Marathon. Later this year they’ll hit Seattle, Hawaii, Dublin, and possibly Budapest. Someday, Butler says, they want to conquer Comrades Marathon in South Africa, the world’s oldest ultra. “I just want to do as many runs as possible,” he says.
Though Butler and Rix have settled into a race-day groove, they still hit speed bumps. “As much as I love when it’s just Anthony and I,” Rix says, “it’s also very difficult because it’s hard for me to watch my feet, his feet, his head, his whole body, the road, and other runners.”
That’s why Butler often runs with additional Achilles guides, even if he’s more aggressive than the entire entourage combined. “Anthony has a much louder voice than I, or any of the tiny females that run next to him, have,” Rix says. “So he’ll yell at the top of his lungs, ‘Blind man coming through!’ And the seas part for him.”
But Butler’s brashness brings Rix much-needed balance. “He’s fearless,” she says. “He takes charge of his own life, and I need to be reminded of that for myself. Sometimes it’s hard for me to have that confidence. He makes me realize I can step out and just go after it like he can.”
Butler, meanwhile, credits his companion for calming him down. “She’s made me softer, kinder, and more patient over time,” he says. “Since she doesn’t ever raise her voice, I don’t have to raise mine.”
To hear them both tell it, they just fit together, tethered, even though they literally see the world in different ways. Sure, Rix occasionally wonders what it would be like if Butler weren’t visually impaired—“Maybe only when I’m wearing a really great outfit,” she jokes—but the disparity deepens their bond. “Because he has no idea what I look like, it means he must love who I am, truly, as a person.”
“I always told my friends I could never date a girl if she doesn’t believe it when I tell her she’s beautiful, because obviously I can’t see her,” Butler says. “Jessie knows I wouldn’t lie when I tell her she’s beautiful, because she hears sincerity in my voice. And I feel the same from her.”
*Butler is currently raising money for his Tri-Achilles team for a triathlon coming up this year. If you wish to donate, you can do so here.
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