There was no love at first sight for Ashley Stanley and Shaun Block.
"I could not stand him when I first met him," Ashley says.
The first time I saw my future spouse:
She says: “I thought there was something about him! He’s handsome and yet somewhat mysterious. He had that bad boy vibe. So naturally, I said to myself, ‘I’ve got to get to know him more.’”
He says: “I thought she had a wonderful personality. In high school it isn’t always easy to talk to girls, but she made being a friend the most natural thing in the world.”
On our wedding day:
She says: “I soaked up every second and minute of it. I didn’t want to forget a thing. I couldn’t wait to see him waiting on me at the altar. I knew my new chapter of my life was beginning on that day, and I was eager for us to write it together.”
He says: “Honestly, I was so afraid I would miss our wedding, I got to the church 12 hours early. In hindsight, that might have been a little too early. However, it gave me all day to reflect and think about the new life we were about to begin together, which was very nerve wracking to say the least.”
My advice for a lasting marriage is:
She says: “Always communicate with one another, and never get too comfortable in your relationship. It’s important to tell the other that you love them daily.”
He says: “Finding that one person you can be yourself with, and who still wants to be your friend in spite. Find that person who daily makes you want to be a better person. And chemistry, passion for each other — when they walk in the room, the world fades away and all you can see is them.”
Ashley and Shaun went to elementary school in North Little Rock, but Ashley had gone to Horace Mann Magnet Junior High School for seventh through ninth grades instead of going straight to North Little Rock High School-East Campus. Shaun had already been there for a year when Ashley arrived as a sophomore in 1995.
"I hadn't been in that district for three or four years, and we had drifted apart so I met new friends. It seemed like every girl I met had dated him," she says. "They were like, 'You have to stay away from him. He's just awful. He's just a player.'"
She and Shaun had keyboarding class together, though, and they had several mutual friends. Shaun started going out with a girl from their school.
"She was on the swim team and she never had time for him. She would call me and say, 'I made this date with Shaun, and I just can't go because I have this swim thing. Will you go with him, please?'" Ashley says.
As she got to know him better on those fill-in dates to movies and concerts, Ashley decided he wasn't the player her friends had led her to believe he was.
They gradually started acting as a couple.
"It was just comfortable," Shaun says. "We had been friends and hanging out together so long that it just made sense."
But then he started drifting away.
"I was like, 'If you don't have time, I'm moving on,'" Ashley says. "I started dating this other guy."
Two months after that, Shaun came to his senses and called her. He says he just hadn't been mature enough for a committed relationship until then. He was, after all, just in high school, and his longest relationship up to that point had been barely two months.
"I wasn't looking for the picket fence and the two kids and the dogs at that point," he says. "I wasn't looking at it long-term because I still didn't even know what I was going to do. I realized that I did miss her, and it was totally different from all the other previous relationships that I had had. It was something different and I knew I had to try harder."
He wanted another chance, he told her. He had to tell her over and over for a couple more months before she finally agreed to go out with him.
"I am nothing if not persistent," he says. She conceded finally, and in September 1996 they went to a movie.
After high school, Shaun enrolled in classes at Pulaski Technical College. Ashley went to the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Ashley's grandmother got sick, and Ashley transferred to the University of Central Arkansas in Conway after her freshman year to help care for her. Well, that and so she could be closer to Shaun.
Shaun transferred to UCA, too, and they carpooled to classes.
On Christmas Eve 1999, Shaun picked Ashley up to go to her family's Christmas celebration in North Little Rock, but she was confused when he drove toward Cabot. His mother had asked him to run an errand, he told her.
"I was so mad because we were going to be late to my family's Christmas," Ashley says.
When they turned off at the road to Lake Pickthorne, she knew something was up. Lake Pickthorne was their summer hangout, where they spent time together fishing and having picnics.
He pulled up at the dock and asked her to walk out there with him.
"It was freezing. My teeth were chattering," she says.
"But it was beautiful," Shaun says. "There was a nice full moon, the water was glistening and we were freezing to death."
He got down on one knee and asked if she would marry him. Ashley said yes. Ashley's father died when she was younger, so Shaun asked for a blessing from her mother and brothers before he proposed.
"In hindsight, I should have just done this in front of her whole family, but I don't think my nerves could have taken it," Shaun says.
"I'm glad he didn't," she says. "That's a private thing, and I'm glad it was just us there for that."
They were married on Dec. 21, 2002, at First United Methodist Church in downtown Little Rock.
Both work at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. She is a research program manager in the birth defects section at UAMS, and he is a computer programmer in the UAMS development group. They have two children -- Catherine, 6, and William, 3.
"They're our Royal Pair," Ashley quips. "We had our names picked out in high school when we were dating."
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High Profile on 01/22/2017