A kids' game of kiss chase in 1985 was the beginning of a romance for a couple who recently celebrated 17 years of marriage.
Kristi Carothers was 11 when she went to church camp in Tennessee and noticed a boy in a collar brace sitting alone by the pool.
The first time I saw my future spouse
She says: “I was just turning 12 and I don’t remember having any specific thought about him at all.”
He says: “I was a little boy. I probably thought something very innocent. I thought she was cute.”
On our wedding day
She says: “I just remember being really excited to finally get to marry my best friend.”
He says: “I felt an incredible peace. I knew for sure that this was the right thing to do and that it was forever.”
My advice for a long happy marriage is
She says: “You’ve got to have a personal relationship with Christ and you’ve got to make time for each other.”
He says: “I do totally believe that God has protected us from all kinds of things and the biggest thing in changing our relationship over time is that He has changed both of us and made us complete. Because of that we make great partners.”
"He just looked so sad," says Kristi, who quickly learned that the boy, Christian De Vries, lived in her hometown of Little Rock.
After camp, Kristi and Christian became pen pals, and she invited him to her 12th birthday party.
"He asked if he would be the only boy," Kristi says. "I told him he was the only boy friend that I had so, yeah, he probably would. He said, 'Can I bring my brother, so I'm not the only boy there?'"
Christian's brother, Eric, who was almost 14, had been nonchalant about going, but after he met the birthday girl he was glad he went.
"I thought, 'You know what? She is too old for my little brother.' I thought she was kind of cute," he says.
Kristi's mom had a slate of party games planned, but there was a little free time while the food was being prepared.
"She's going to say I was chasing her. I do not remember it that way at all," Eric says. "I think she was chasing me. If I had any sense I would have been chasing her. Anyway, at some point, I did catch her and I did give her a kiss."
Kristi does recall Eric chasing her -- and she remembers getting caught.
"I froze," she says. "I knew we were playing kiss chase, but kids say things and I wasn't expecting him to actually follow through and do it."
They kept in touch after that, and since their parents knew each other through church affiliations, Kristi even got invited to their house to ring in the New Year in 1986.
She and Eric were young, though, and things fizzled quickly.
"I don't remember seeing him or talking to him until maybe six years later when we ran into each other in Mazzio's Pizza," Kristi says.
A couple of days later he called to ask her for a date. She was still living with her parents, and Eric dialed their number, realizing he knew it by heart.
They had dinner at a Mexican restaurant, and when Eric drove her home he stayed to watch television.
"The Newlywed Game was on and this guy said, 'It's not really a date unless there's a kiss involved.' As soon as I heard that I was like, 'Oh, snap, I've got an angle,'" he says. He used that line to sneak a second kiss.
He had been home for the summer, but as fall approached he prepared to head back to Hendrix College in Conway.
"The night before he left, he asked if we could be exclusive," Kristi says.
They dated for a few years, and Kristi was ready to marry, but Eric wasn't quite prepared to commit, so they broke up.
She almost refused when Eric called a year later to ask if she would stop by his apartment on her way home from work. She had a hard time staying angry after he gave her flowers, but she still balked when he asked her to drive somewhere with him.
Eric had spent the day at Emerald Park in North Little Rock, rappelling down a cliff and moving boulders into the shape of a heart filled with her initials and the words, "I love you." He showed her that and asked if they could get back together.
"I told him I would think about it and let him know," Kristi says. She made him wait until the next day for an answer.
A couple of months later, in May 1998, Eric suggested an impromptu cookout with friends and family. They stood in a circle and held hands to pray before they ate, and after the "Amen," he dropped to one knee.
He had asked her a few weeks earlier what kind of ring she would like if they got married.
"I was like, 'Dude, you can go to Kmart and get a ring out of the gumball machine if you want. I don't care. Let's just get married. I want to marry you. I want to be your wife,'" she says.
He gave her a beautiful tanzanite wedding ring, brought from Tanzania, where he spent his early years.
They were married on Feb. 27, 1999, in Fellowship Bible Church.
The couple have three children -- Lauran, Tyler and Emma.
They know things have worked out just as they were supposed to for their family.
"We know for a fact that that was God," Kristi says. "We needed that year apart to grow individually, but I knew in that year that he was the one God had chosen for me because I never stopped loving him."
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High Profile on 05/22/2016