Phyllis Marshall's pen ran out of ink as she was taking down Byron Hodges' order. This was at the Kentucky Fried Chicken on the corner of 23rd and Broadway in Little Rock, at a time when a food order might have been taken down on paper -- 1974.
Byron was all too happy to come to her aid -- that is, if she were also willing to use his pen to jot down her phone number.
"He said, 'Here you can use my pen.' Then he said, under his breath, 'Now, when you finish taking the order, write your phone number down.'"
The first time I saw my spouse:
She says: “I was sort of fascinated by him.”
He says: “I thought I would come back the next night.”
On our wedding day:
She says: “I knew he was going to be my lifelong husband. It was a private thing, but I couldn’t wait to tell everybody.”
He says: “I guess every man has apprehension, but I turned around and looked at her and I thought I would be miserable without her.”
My advice for a long marriage is:
She says: “Respect — you must have it. Communication is the key. And it will not last if you don’t have trust.”
He says: “Respect, communication and love. You have to take time to talk to one another and you have to grow into being friends. There’s no time I can’t pick up the phone and say, ‘I’ve got to have a little help on this.’”
They were something of an unlikely pair.
Phyllis was a junior at Hall High School in Little Rock. Byron, six years older, had just moved from Cairo, Ill., to go to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He worked full time during the day and went to classes at night, and that Kentucky Fried Chicken was a regular stop-off before he headed home to his apartment on Louisiana Street.
Phyllis realized Byron was probably older than she was, and she was flattered by the attention. At the same time, she was a bit unsettled.
"I was a 16-year-old black girl, nervous and giddy, so what I did was I wrote a phone number ... Kentucky Fried Chicken's phone number," she says.
Byron, 22, thought she was older. He called as soon as he got home because it was late and he thought she was leaving work and would be home about the same time he was. She answered, still at work, and recognized his voice right away. She was flabbergasted by his call and by his question -- he wanted to know if he could come and visit her. She still lived with her parents, of course, so she deflected the attention to them.
"I said, 'Well, you'll have to ask my mom,'" she says.
She gave him her mother's number and he called immediately.
"This was their conversation. He told my mom that he had met me and would like to come visit me. My mom said, 'You sound like a nice young man. I don't have a problem with you coming over to visit Phyllis, but I will have to be there,'" she says. "He said, 'Well, ma'am, I have a problem.' She said, 'What is your problem?' and he said, 'Well, I'm white.' She just busted out laughing and she said, 'Well, you do have a problem. But that is your problem. That is not our problem. You can come over.'"
He did come over. Phyllis' mother and stepfather were in the next room most of the time. "I was jittery," she says.
"I was still nervous. I didn't know what my mom was going to say, and I didn't know what she was going to come in there and say or if she was going to embarrass me -- not intentionally, but, you know, was she going to say it was time for my company to leave? I was just a young girl."
That was just the first of many visits. They also went to drive-in movies and to the Sweden Creme for snacks, but Phyllis' favorite thing to do was ride around in Byron's red 1967 convertible Camaro. He often picked her up from school in that car, giving rides home to her friends as well.
On Dec. 27, 1975, in a small, informal ceremony, they exchanged vows they had each written.
Small, as in just the two of them. It was not a wedding.
"Back in 1975 that's just the way it was, Byron says. "We weren't thinking about true marriage. And then it dawned on us, we needed to do the real thing."
On Feb. 14, 1980, they exchanged vows again, this time in front of a preacher. Twenty years later, on Valentine's Day, 2000, they renewed them.
Byron and Phyllis have two children -- Candince and Bryan, both of Little Rock. They also have three grandchildren.
Byron is retired from the sales and legal business. Phyllis graduated from Hall in 1976 and went on to UALR and then to beauty school. She would eventually become an ordained minister. She owns Carousel Fit-4-Life Wellness Center in North Little Rock.
In honor of the place they met, Phyllis gathered KFC gadgets and gear for Byron's birthday last year. They do eat at that restaurant on occasion, although his favorite, the "Jumbo" meal -- five pieces of chicken, mashed potatoes and coleslaw -- is no longer a menu option.
"Back then, I would go home and look at my icebox and I would have six or seven boxes of chicken I hadn't even touched," he says.
He would go back for more the next night anyway, just for a chance to see Phyllis.
If Phyllis had big feelings for Byron in 1974, they have reached the same jumbo status as his preferred chicken meal by now.
"I loved him so much then," she says, ''but I love him even more now."
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High Profile on 02/14/2016