Nearly 60 years have gone by since Ronnie Sigman told Kaye Linhart he loved her and then watched her pull away in a Greyhound bus.
Kaye told him she loved him, too, before she left and she supposes that as much as a 16-year-old can love someone, she did. Her mind, that day in 1959, was on starting nursing school at Tulane University in New Orleans. She was eager to get on with pursuing her career goals, and assumed she would see Ronnie again soon anyway.
They were high school sweethearts, having met at their little high school in Cabool, Mo., and had dated steadily for a couple of years.
Ronnie, then 17, had a ring in his pocket that day, and he intended to give it to Kaye.
"She was in a hurry to leave, and I just felt the time wasn't right. I just didn't do it," Ronnie says. He thought there would be another opportunity.
That wasn't to be, though. Kaye got wrapped up in her studies, and while she was in school her parents moved away, giving her no compelling reason to go back to Cabool.
The years ticked by, and Ronnie met and married someone else. So did Kaye. Ronnie stayed in Cabool and started his own business, Atlas Extermination Co., and Kaye worked as a nurse in Arkansas and Florida.
Kaye was widowed in 1999. In 2009, she returned to Cabool for the 50th class reunion. It was the first time she had seen Ronnie since she was 16.
"There were a bunch of us standing around, and we saw each other and gave each other a big hug and kind of exchanged pleasantries, and he said he had heard I had lost my husband," says Kaye, then Kaye Mills. "He was taking care of his terminally ill wife then. I sympathized and empathized with him, and we chatted briefly and that was pretty much the extent of it."
A few years later, Ronnie, then a widower, found the ring he had been planning to give to Kaye and decided he wanted her to have it. He looked up her address in the class reunion information and mailed it to her.
"It came back," he says.
She had moved from Florida to Arkansas by then, though he had no way of knowing that. He had a friend look her up on the internet.
In 2015, he called her and during their conversation he asked if she was involved with anyone.
"I have no intention of getting remarried, and no, I'm not seeing anyone," she told him. She had not dated at all over the 16 years since she lost her husband. "He said he had something that belonged to me, and I said, 'What? No ...'"
He didn't tell her what it was but he asked if he could send it to her. She was surprised to find the ring in her mailbox a few days later -- and with it a pair of diamond earrings.
"The ring was hers -- I intended for her to have it and I wanted to give it to her. But I thought that ring didn't amount to much so I got her those earrings. I just wanted her to have something more valuable than the ring was," he says.
She wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of his sending her expensive earrings and told him so. She didn't wear them or the ring right away. But she and Ronnie began talking regularly.
"We were in the process of getting to know each other again -- the people we are now, not the people we were then," she says.
After a while, they met in Mountain Home.
"We just went to get to know each other, go out to eat, go on a date," Kaye says.
Then they began meeting in Batesville, where Kaye's sister lives.
On one of those occasions, "He said, 'How about it? Shouldn't we get married? We've decided we love each other. We want to spend the rest of our time together. What do you think about that?' I said, 'I'll let you know,'" Kaye says.
They exchanged vows Oct. 8 at Markham Street Baptist Church in Little Rock.
They have new wedding rings, and Kaye also wears the engagement ring Ronnie bought her all those years ago. They choose to look forward to their life together rather than back at the one they might have had.
"I married another lady that I loved and had a family with, and if she was still here today I would still be with her," Ronnie says. "But I think we'll be happy and enjoy our time together because we both need somebody."
Kaye shares that sentiment.
"We've discussed this many times and we think that we were meant to be together in our later years," Kaye says. "I think that because I had a really, really good life and he did too. I think if we had married that young we probably would have not made it. I get the feeling that it happened exactly like it should have."
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The first time I saw my future spouse:
She says: “I thought he was as cute as a button. He was this tall, handsome football player with the cutest crew-top I ever saw.”
He says: “When we were in high school I thought she was the prettiest girl I ever saw.”
The first time I saw my future spouse again:
She says: “I thought he still looks like the same guy that I remember back from high school.”
He says: “She was as vibrant and good-looking as she was the last time I saw her.”
On our wedding day:
She says: “I felt so blessed to have dear friends and both families gathered around to celebrate with us.”
He says: “My life feels complete.”
High Profile on 10/16/2016