To connect with his three daughters, Dr. Sameh Toma started an equestrian center on a 30-acre North Carolina farm he bought in 1996. Cindy Luihn started boarding her horse there following her divorce, later bringing along her three daughters.

Before long, the farm became more than a place where Toma's and Luihn's daughters rode together -- it was where Toma, by then divorced, fell in love with Luihn.

The couple had known each other growing up because Toma was friends with Luihn's older brothers. "She was the cute younger sister," said Toma, 66, a reproductive endocrinologist and fertility doctor.

They got married in 2002. Combining their families worked well, said Luihn, 61, who inherited a major YUM Brands franchise of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Taco Bells in the Southeast. "It is like a female Brady Bunch," she said.

So when it came time to build a new house in Carey, N.C., together -- about 12 miles away from the horse farm -- it only made sense that horses emerged as a dominant theme in the design: chairs made from saddle leather, wide-plank floors reminiscent of barn aisles, sliding barn doors.

For Toma and Luihn, the priority was to create a home where their blended family of six daughters and eight grandchildren would want to stay over at the same time. "Family is everything, and that core value is what I wanted throughout the design," said Toma.

In 2018, the couple bought a traditional, four-bedroom, 4,684-square-foot house on 0.75 acre overlooking a lake on a golf course for $1.275 million. They tore it down and built a 7,500-square-foot, four-bedroom house for $4 million.

It took four years to build, finishing in 2025, partly because the pandemic delayed supplies and worker availability and partly because the steep hill where the house was built made construction more challenging.

To further embed the family in the house, the couple hired one of their daughters, Megan Toma, 38, a founder of Toma Farren Architects, to design it and another daughter, Nicole Toma Townsend, 41, a principal at Toma Townsend Construction, to build it.

Megan, who still rides her horse at her father's barn every morning and still competes in shows, said riding horses not only influenced how she chose materials but also gave her the discipline and confidence to take on a project of this size. "I learned that if you stick with something and you trust your intuition, you can make anything happen," she said.

Communicating with her horse also taught her teamwork, Megan said. "It's a partnership." Working with her sister could get combative at times, she said, but the end result was stronger because of their openness. "She's not going to just do what I say," said Megan. "She tells me when I need to think something through more."

Nicole's daughter Charleston Townsend, 11, accompanied her mother daily to the house during construction. "It's so cool to have seen it from start to finish," Charleston said.

Like her mother, she rides a pony at her grandfather's horse farm every day after school and regularly spends the night at her grandparents' house with her cousins.