RIGHT TIME RIGHT PLACE

Long after college, she was the song in his heart

Jeff and Carole Chandler on their wedding day, April 17, 2014
Jeff and Carole Chandler on their wedding day, April 17, 2014

Jeff Chandler and Carole Winther went to Harding College in Searcy together in the early 1970s. Then they dated -- four decades later. It's never too late to give it the old college try.

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Jeff Chandler

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Carole Winther

"I knew who she was in college just because she's a pretty girl and you always remember who the pretty girls are," he says.

The first time I saw my spouse:

She says: “Was in pictures on Facebook.”

He says: “She was a pretty girl in college.”

On our wedding day:

She says: “I felt like a princess. It was emotional. He played the guitar and sang to me as I walked down this big staircase. I had to stop halfway down and wipe tears from my eyes.”

He says: “We flew from Nashville to Denver and spent the first few days of our honeymoon in Estes Park, Colo. But we did not change clothes. I went in my suit and she wore her wedding dress and carried her bouquet. Every time we changed planes they would clap for us as we walked off the tarmac.”

Three years younger, she says she can't remember him in college. They finished and each married and moved away to start lives and families.

Jeff moved to Nashville, Tenn., to sing with Marty Robbins. He was onstage at a concert in Stone Mountain, Ga., as Carole and her husband, a friend of Jeff's from college, watched.

"I had a baby -- my daughter was 4 or 5 months old -- and it was a long concert and we were sitting way far back and all I remembered was that he was a dark-haired person sitting up there singing," Carole says.

She didn't care much for country music back then -- that has since changed -- and she didn't accompany her husband backstage after the show as he went to talk with Jeff.

Twenty years passed and Carole's daughter, Kristen Altman, the baby at the concert, was killed in a car wreck.

"I started a foundation in my daughter's name, and a scholarship fund at the college," says Carole, who also began a personal ministry of reaching out to people who are hurting.

Nancy, Jeff's wife of more than 30 years, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2010.

"She was one of those people that everyone admired," says Carole, who knew Nancy in college. "She was popular and she was a cheerleader and all those kinds of things, and she was special even when she was in college."

Carole and Jeff had mutual friends on Facebook, so she saw updates on Nancy's condition and she sent notes to her and Jeff as they struggled with her diagnosis. Carole was gearing up to start a fundraiser to help defray their medical expenses when Nancy died in May 2012.

Shortly after that, Carole and her husband divorced.

In August 2013, Jeff's college roommate was turning 60 and planning a birthday celebration at a beach house in Florida. He invited Jeff, and his wife invited Carole.

"Of course, we got wind of it because we had to know who was going down there," Carole says. "We got in touch through Facebook and laughed about them trying to fix us up."

"We went down there and it was like magic," Jeff says.

Jeff asked before they went home, he to Little Rock and she to Dallas, if he could call and ask her for a date in a couple of weeks. He didn't wait that long; he made the trip to see her the following weekend.

Jeff, then in pharmaceutical sales, and Carole, a Realtor, began talking. Some calls went on for hours. "You get to know each other well because you're not smooching or gazing into each other's eyes. You're actually talking about your feelings and your life and you get to know each other better," he says.

By November, Jeff was certain he wanted to marry Carole.

"In March, I got a diamond ring and I wanted to ask her to marry me but I told my daughter, 'Hey, it needs to be something really great. We need to go see David Copperfield, and he needs to get her on stage and make a diamond ring appear or something like that.'"

Jeff's daughter, Abby Brown of Little Rock, hinted that he should maybe scale his plans back a bit and suggested that since he was a singer/songwriter, maybe he could write her a song. He did.

He sang to her during a visit to the Nashville home of Joy and Joe Roper, the friends who set them up, a stop on the way to visit Carole's daughter, Dana Clark, in Auburn, Ga. In the video of the proposal posted to YouTube.com, the moment she realizes he has written the song for her is apparent.

"It was the part where he sang, 'That's the way it's supposed to be,'" she says of a phrase that has been key for them throughout their relationship.

They were married April 17, 2014, on the front porch of their friends' Nashville home, in a small private ceremony conducted by Joe Roper.

Jeff has four children, Abby, Rebekah Gates of Philadelphia, Joseph Chandler of Little Rock and Anna Grace Chandler of New York. He has four grandchildren; Carole has one. They all gathered for a family party at the Ropers' house over the July Fourth holiday.

After they got married, Jeff changed careers so they could sell real estate as the Chandler Team at Re/Max Elite in Little Rock.

They enjoy spending time together and do that as often as they can.

"I could not wait to start my life with this man," Carole says. "I wish we were younger and could have more years but we are going to make these years count for as much as we can."

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 09/06/2015

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