RIGHT TIME RIGHT PLACE

Sister's little dance teammate becomes his bride

Jim and Angela Hopkins were married Sept. 23, 2000, at a house that belonged to his grandmother and was restored by his parents. The property sits atop a bluff overlooking the Arkansas River.
Jim and Angela Hopkins were married Sept. 23, 2000, at a house that belonged to his grandmother and was restored by his parents. The property sits atop a bluff overlooking the Arkansas River.

Jim Hopkins doesn't remember seeing Angela Pacello before she showed up at his house near the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with some other people from his hometown in 1996.

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Growing up, Angela met Jim’s parents several times because she was friends with his sister. “Kimberly’s parents hosted our prom party in eighth grade and I was there,” Angela says. “I never would have guessed that they would be my in-laws years down the road. It’s kind of crazy.”

"I knew she was a Van Buren girl because of the association she had with the friends she was visiting," he says.

The first time I saw my spouse:

She says: “He was just my friend’s older brother.”

He says: “I thought she was an attractive, beautiful lady. I was certainly interested right away.”

On our wedding day:

She says: “I was so excited, overjoyed, so ready to get married.”

He says: “I was extremely nervous but I was extremely excited, too, and ready to get married.”

My advice for a long happy marriage is:

She says: “Be partners in everything you do. You’ve got to have each other’s backs. You’ve got to laugh a lot. A sense of humor is so important in a marriage.”

He says: “Listen more than you talk but don’t stop talking.”

Angela had been friends with Jim's little sister, Kimberly, since about third grade.

"I grew up being on a dance team with his sister and spending the night at his house but never really paying much attention to Kimberly's older brother," she says.

After high school graduation, Kimberly left for Drury University in Springfield, Mo., while most of their other friends went off to the University of Arkansas. Angela stayed behind at neighboring WestArk Community College (now the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith).

"I stayed behind to take care of my mom and grandma and some family, so I didn't get to go to UA until my second year," Angela says. "My friends who were up in Fayetteville said 'Hey, why don't you come up and we'll show you around.'"

Her friends lived in Pomfret Hall, and they hung out with Jim and his friends, who lived across the way on California Boulevard. That's where they took Angela when she visited.

She sort of recognized Jim from high school -- he's two years older -- but mostly she just thought he was cute and decided to talk to him.

He still didn't make the association between Angela and his sister.

"I don't think he paid much attention to Kimberly's gaggle of girlfriends," Angela says.

But, she says, maybe that's for the best.

"I think it was because it was a different time and a different place," she says. "I think that maybe if we had met or hung out in those earlier years it wouldn't have happened the way it did."

Jim called her a couple of weekends later and asked her for a date. He drove to Van Buren and picked her up for dinner and a movie -- Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.

They alternated weekends in Fayetteville and Van Buren to see each other until June 1997, when Angela moved to Fayetteville to continue her college education.

Angela and Kimberly had lost touch and Kimberly didn't know she and Jim were dating for a while.

"I hadn't seen her since our senior trip and then she came down for a visit from college and she stopped by Jim's house for a visit and Jim and I were sitting on the couch watching a movie. She was like, 'Well, Angela, what are you doing here?' And I was like, 'I'm dating your brother!'"

In March 2000, Angela and Jim drove to Santa Fe, N.M., for a spring break ski trip.

They were going up the mountain to make a ski run and had just gotten off the lift when Jim suggested they stop and have someone take their photo.

"I thought she was probably expecting a proposal at night over a nice dinner so I proposed in the middle of the day on top of the ski mountain," Jim says.

He lucked out with the guy who snapped the pictures.

"I thought we were just getting our picture taken real quick and he took off his gloves and I said, 'You don't have to take your gloves off for us to have our picture taken'," Angela says. "He said 'Well, hang on a second,' and he started getting something out of his pocket. And then he got down on one knee and proposed to me."

There were only three or four frames left on the roll of film that day; those photos now hang on their bedroom wall.

"There's a picture of him pulling out the ring and my shocked face, and him getting down on one knee, and the last picture is of him putting the ring on my finger and me looking at it," she says.

They were married on Sept. 23, 2000, at Jim's parents' home, four years to the day of their first date.

The house originally belonged to his grandmother and was special to him because he and his siblings had spent their Saturday nights there as children. It was severely damaged in a storm in 1996, but his parents restored it, finishing the project just a week before Jim and Angela exchanged their vows on the bluff overlooking the Arkansas River.

The Hopkinses live in Bella Vista, where Jim works as a technical expert for Walmart Information Systems Division. Angela works part time at Arvest Asset Management as a securities trader and teaches Zumba. They have two sons, Christian, 11, and Andrew, 6.

Growing up, Angela met Jim's parents several times because she was friends with his sister. "Kimberly's parents hosted our prom party in eighth grade and I was there," Angela says, "I never would have guessed that they would be my in-laws years down the road. It's kind of crazy."

If you have an interesting how-we-met story or if you know someone who does, please call (501) 378-3496 or email:

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High Profile on 10/04/2015

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