After being let go from the Green Bay Packers training camp in 1994, he got a job working the night shift at a local Fareway grocery store. He was also assistant-coaching at Northern Iowa. Warner still wanted to play in the NFL, but with that not seeming it was going to happen, and the long hours at the Fareway for minimum wage creating financial trouble for him, Warner began playing in the Arena Football League. In 1996 and almost a year before Kurt and Brenda's marriage, Brenda's parents, Larry and Jenny Carney, were killed when their Arkansas home was destroyed by a tornado.