Tom Selby's little sister did not have to twist his arm to convince him to hop on his bike and go to her friend's house to meet a girl.
Tom was 14 in 1956 and his sister's friend, two years his junior, had a cousin from Little Rock visiting her in Conway.
I knew he/she was the one for me:
He says: “Because I just fell in love with her right off the bat right after I met her.”
She says: “Because he was my best friend.”
My advice for a long happy marriage is:
He says: “Trust each other and love each other.”
She says: “You’ve got to be very flexible and work with each other. Don’t take an easy out. Always work for it.”
The first time I saw my future spouse:
He says: “I thought she was beautiful.”
She says: “I thought he was cute. He was slim and I thought he was handsome.”
Diane Groves, also 14, had not heard of Tom. "I thought Patsy and Barbara were up to something, but, I didn't know he was coming."
"And I didn't know she didn't know," he says.
No matter. They hit it off from the get-go. By the time Diane went home, they were thinking of each other as boyfriend and girlfriend.
He got to call her a few times, but long-distance was expensive. Mostly they wrote letters. He went to see her a few times, hitching a ride with people he knew who were headed that way. He and Diane would catch a bus from her house on North Taylor Street to watch a movie downtown.
Their young love might have fizzled out had history not taken its course. As Diane prepared to enter Central High School, the desegregation crisis brewed. Her mother and stepfather sent her to live with one of many relatives she had in Conway so she could go to school there.
"I thought it was the greatest thing ever," he says of their romance.
Not the historic standoff.
"We became thick as thieves after she moved."
Diane's mother and stepfather moved to Conway a few months later, making Diane's move to Tom's high school permanent. She got a new car -- Tom did not have one -- and in it they went to the pool, cruised around town and made countless trips to drive-ins.
The summer Tom was 16, he worked at an ice plant 10 hours a day, seven days a week for $1 an hour. He did it all to buy an engagement ring.
"I got a whole quarter carat ring. I thought that was a big ring," he says. "After I got it, I couldn't wait. I just went over to her house and we were outside and I said, 'I've got something for you.' And I showed her the ring."
The timing might have thrown her, but the proposal did not.
"He was my best friend. We did everything together. I never had any doubt that we would end up spending our lives together. I just assumed that was the way it would be," she says.
On Sept. 12, 1959, Diane told her mother she was going to a bunking party. Tom told his parents he was going to Memphis to see a friend who had recently gotten a job there. But they really went to Stillwell, Okla., home of the Marrying Judge, they say.
"You could go over there and get married and his staff would stand up as the witnesses and all that. And you didn't have to have any kind of tests or anything, and he would marry you for about $35," Tom says.
Arriving late, they ran up the courthouse steps as the staff was preparing to lock up for the day. Although there was a frilly light blue dress that Diane hoped to wear for her nuptials hanging in the car, there was no time for her to change into it.
"I got married in a pair of pants and a shirt," she says. "I was so upset."
No, not really. Not nearly as upset as she'd be the day after.
While they were gone, his mother had run into the mother of the friend Tom was supposed to be spending the weekend with, and quickly realized that Tom was not where he said he would be. She called Diane's mother, who called the girl she was supposed to be with, and the ruse was uncovered.
"I'll never forget as long as I live when I got back and I walked in the door, seeing all their faces," Tom says.
They got an apartment and went through their senior year of high school together, graduating in 1960.
"We were the talk of the school," Diane says. "It was a scandal back then."
Tom's work took them to Oklahoma, Mississippi, then back to central Arkansas. They moved to Conway about 14 years ago. He is retired from Coulson Oil; Diane works for Express Bus.
They have two children -- Thomas Joseph Selby Jr. of North Little Rock and Lisa Honea of Little Rock. They also have three grandchildren, one of whom is a senior at Central High.
"I hate that all that happened at Central," Tom says, "but it worked out pretty good for us. We wouldn't have been able to spend nearly that much time together that early on."
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High Profile on 09/07/2014