Talking with the Coopers is an exercise in contrasts. Corey is all positive energy. Even in the most casual of conversations, he is pushing forward, exploring, testing out ideas by speaking them into existence. It’s a style that some employees said takes a while to get used to.
“I jump into things deep and fast,” said Corey. “I’m like a dolphin. I use talking as echolocation. I can’t passively observe. I haven’t ever gotten what I want that way.”
Magda has the quiet confidence of a former athlete and the poise of someone used to playing the long game. Someone who can swim six hours a day for an entire year to try to win a national championship in four days in March. She often pauses before speaking, looking for the right word.
“There’s a yin and yang with the two of us for sure,” she said. Their 18-year relationship reveals itself in the easy way they finish each other’s sentences and the occasional furtive looks they give one another.
But they are united in their passion for their work, for their family, for their employees and for Auburn. Their love of the school is the reason they won’t relocate the company because it would be too far away from the Plains. And why they come back on the weekends to games and hire Auburn graduates whenever they can.
“Auburn has a soul,” Corey said. “It’s as simple as that.”
Corey grew up in Jackson, Miss. an inquisitive and energetic kid. His mom taught school and his father ran a small car dealership. They both started several unsuccessful small businesses and provided Corey with the basics, but nothing more.
By the time Corey is five, he is tearing apart radios and toy tractors to see how they work. At six, wanting a guitar, he makes a working one—out of a cereal box. Already sure he is going to be an engineer, Corey makes his own fishing rod at eight. He tinkers. He analyzes. He begins to construct a life he wants with his own hands.
His parents divorce and he moves with his mom to Texas, then Alabama and then to Woodstock, Ga. for high school, where he excels in math (“it was like my second language”), physics and calculus. He graduates with a 4.2 GPA and picks Auburn engineering over Georgia Tech. He enrolls in fall 2001 with 31 college credits.
