Elizabeth Bogard made her way to the Instituto Allendo in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico, as a serious art student. When she left she fully intended to eschew romance and stay focused on her passion. But when she got back to her folks' house in the States, she found a stack of letters from an Arkansan she met in Mexico. Within weeks she was betrothed.
Elizabeth, who grew up in North Little Rock, had been at the Instituto for a couple of months when William McClanahan arrived in June 1966.
The first time I saw my spouse:
She says: “I thought he was really good looking, and he looked exactly like Paul McCartney. I was a really big Beatles fan at the time.”
He says: “I thought she looked exactly like Elizabeth Taylor.”
The first time I met my future in-laws:
She says: “His mother came to get him in Mexico. She should never have come to Mexico. She was not prepared for a foreign place. We were in this little town where nothing was like what she was used to. Everything was very primitive to her and she was not happy.”
He says: “I didn’t meet them until the night before our wedding. I was petrified.”
My advice for a long happy marriage:
She says: “To be good friends and remain good friends.”
He says: “And to laugh a lot. Have common interests. Don’t try to change the person.”
William's professor at Arkansas State University at Jonesboro had been a guest professor at the Instituto and he encouraged William to go.
William had a friend who was already there, and that friend knew Elizabeth, who had just completed bachelor's degrees at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She had spent a good deal of time in Mexico with her family growing up and desperately wanted to go back. The graduate program at the Instituto was a perfect fit, although she and William were anomalies at the international school.
"Every other student was from New York or Chicago or San Francisco or Europe and we were the hillbillies," she says. "They thought we were the strangest things in the world, and they had never known anybody from Arkansas. They finally started to warm up to us after they saw that we could paint."
William's friend picked him up at the train station the day he arrived, and the friend took him straight to Elizabeth's apartment for introductions.
For the next couple of months, William and Elizabeth were immersed in the eclectic bohemian culture of San Miguel. They huddled in cafes for hours with whoever showed up, pondering politics and pontificating about art and artists and colors. They went to classes and visited various archaeological sites in the area.
In August 1966, as they stood on the steps of the pre-Colombian Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan, Mexico, William revealed his heart -- sort of.
"He said, 'Wouldn't it be good if we could do this together for the rest of our lives?'" she says. "But there were other people with us. We were just sitting up there on this grand pyramid and it's so impressive and I thought, 'Well, he was just carried away by the moment.' I didn't take him seriously."
A couple of days before he left to prepare for a teaching job in Alton, Mo., William needed to know how she felt about him.
Elizabeth didn't intend to leave Mexico -- and since there hadn't been any meaningful conversations between them about the future, she thought that was the end of that.
"I knew I really liked him, and I knew he liked me, but we never did tell each other," she says. "I was really sad when he left because I thought, 'Well, he didn't care anything about me romantically.' I didn't think I would see him again."
Elizabeth's father had other plans for her. So did William.
"I was not going to come back from Mexico because I loved it," she says. "My father told my brother he better go down there and get me and bring me back home or they would never get me back."
Just before she left, her mentor gave her some advice.
"He said, 'Now, Elizabeth, don't go back and get married and have children. I've seen more good women artists ruined by that because once a woman gets married, her painting takes a backseat.' I said, 'I won't.' And then I went back home."
Home, in Arkansas, is where she found the stack of letters from William.
They weren't exactly love letters -- "I was not a writer" -- but the fact that they were there at all surprised Elizabeth.
"Then we started talking on the phone and he said, 'Will you marry me?'" she says.
William and Elizabeth exchanged their vows on Nov. 28, 1966, in a little Methodist church in Alton, with just their families in attendance. They lived in Missouri for about six years before moving to Little Rock, where William taught high school.
Soon after he retired in 1987, they returned to San Miguel, where they lived for about 20 years before coming back to Arkansas. These days they call Scott home.
The McClanahans have a daughter, Lauren Boyle of Dallas. They have one grandchild.
Just as her mentor's warning didn't deter her from marriage, marriage didn't deter her from the pursuit of her passion.
"We paint and we paint ... and we paint," she says.
Their courtship, she says, may sound bizarre to some. It has served them well, though.
"It was almost like it was just meant to be and it just happened," she says. "I will say he's my best friend."
"And," William says, "she's my best friend."
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High Profile on 03/08/2015