RIGHT TIME RIGHT PLACE: He checked her out at Penney's, liked what he saw

Tom and Polly Nichols started KVRE-FM in Hot Springs Village in 1994. They started another station in Glenwood 18 years before that and sold it in 1997. “We’ve kind of specialized in creating stations,” Tom says.
Tom and Polly Nichols started KVRE-FM in Hot Springs Village in 1994. They started another station in Glenwood 18 years before that and sold it in 1997. “We’ve kind of specialized in creating stations,” Tom says.

Tom Nichols wasn't looking for new clothes when he wandered through the J.C. Penney men's department in the fall of 1966.

He was trying to get a good look at Polly Williams.

The first time I saw my future spouse:

He says: “I thought she was a beautiful girl. That caused me to make the call.”

She says: “I thought, ‘He does have a brain and he’s interested in all kinds of different things and he’s willing to try something different — that doesn’t scare him.’”

On our wedding day:

He says: “The church had called and asked if she wanted an organist. Polly hates organ music so she said, ‘No music.’ Walking down there, up to the minister, I was whistling a song I’d been playing on my radio station — it was popular at the time — ‘Winchester Cathedral.’”

She says: “He had told me that if the minister talks too long I’m going to go ahead and kick him. So after the minister said, ‘I now pronounce you man and wife,’ I immediately turned between him and my husband so there was no possibility he could turn and kick him. It was a big joke.”

My advice for a long happy marriage:

He says: “Marry somebody that you’re going to be compatible with.”

She says: “You learn when to say something and when to say nothing at all. I think that is one of the most valuable things that anyone getting married can think about.”

He had been casually dating a girl who went to Texas Christian University in Fort Worth and she suggested he meet Polly, her best friend, who had gotten a drama scholarship to TCU but had opted to stay home because her mother was ill.

Tom, then 25, was general manager of KZNG radio in Hot Springs. J.C. Penney was one of his advertising clients.

"I walked from my office down to J.C. Penney -- she was working in the men's department on the first floor -- and I liked what I saw," Tom says.

He called her on election night, Nov. 8, 1966.

"I think I answered the line, 'Mr. Nichols, I have heard about you,'" says Polly, who was 19. "I had heard that he was a dater. He had dated quite a few people. I figured, 'Well, OK, I want to date that guy and figure out just what is going on.'"

Some of what she heard came directly from him, as he shared details of his day-to-day with radio listeners.

"I would talk about dates once in a while and what was going on in my life and all that," he says.

They made arrangements to go to a play for their first date.

"After our first date I came home and told my mother that I was going to marry him," Polly says.

On their second date they drove to Little Rock to see Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly! Polly invited Tom to the J.C. Penney Christmas party not long after that.

At the time KZNG, on Central Avenue in downtown Hot Springs, only broadcast during the day. Tom took Polly to the radio station office one evening in December, his alternative to the then-popular couples hangout on top of West Mountain.

"In those days, people who were courting would drive on top of West Mountain and people would say, 'We'll go up there and watch the submarine races,' because you could see from that vantage point on top of West Mountain you could see all the lakes around you. You could see Lake Hamilton off in the distance," he explains. "You weren't going up there to watch the submarine races. You were going up there to smooch."

It was cold outside then, and the radio station was warm. They sat together in the production room of Studio B, on the secondhand couch he had gotten from a furniture store in exchange for some advertising time, beneath a Pabst Blue Ribbon clock he had gotten from a sponsor.

"We were having an argument because Tom would meet so many people and he would forget to introduce me," Polly says. "I told him that famous line -- 'I never want to go out with you again. This is it.'"

Tom didn't miss a beat.

"I said, 'Will you marry me?'" he says.

"And I immediately said yes," Polly says. "That ended the argument."

Tom hadn't been planning to propose at that particular moment, but marriage had already been on his mind. He gave her a ring the next day. That happened to be the day that Tom's mother dropped by Penney's to meet the girl her son seemed to have fallen for.

"She came in there and said she wanted to introduce herself. She thought she was going to just talk to me because basically she wanted to know who this girl was, and I thought she knew that we were engaged," Polly says. "I had just gotten the ring and I showed it to her and that was a surprise to her. She said, 'Whatever you do, don't tell him I know.' I didn't say a word to him about that. Literally, she turned into my best friend. We did everything together for ages."

Tom had told his parents about their engagement that night, just as he had planned.

"She didn't act surprised," he says of his mother.

Polly and Tom exchanged their vows on Jan. 7, 1967, at the Oaklawn United Methodist Church in Hot Springs, and they honeymooned in New Orleans before settling back into life together in Hot Springs.

They have one daughter, Alice Bates, and one granddaughter. Alice is general manager of KVRE-FM, the radio station Polly and Tom founded in Hot Springs Village in 1994. They had started a radio station in Glenwood in 1980.

"She had training in dramatics -- she was always good at that," Tom says of Polly. "She started working in the office and doing commercials and later became general manager. She's semi-retired now."

Both Tom and Polly have radio shows these days. Tom still sometimes talks about his romantic interest -- Polly, of course.

He may not have been planning to propose when he did, but it turned out to be the perfect ad-lib.

"Everything just came together," he says. "I certainly didn't want everything to fall apart. I had been looking for this girl for a long time."

If you have an interesting how-we-met story or if you know someone who does, please call (501) 425-7228 or email:

[email protected]

photo

Special to the Democrat-Gazette

Tom Nichols and Polly Williams were married on Jan. 7, 1967. He first called her on election night in 1966. “We were married within three months,” Polly says. “Basically it just clicked. You will know — I think you get a feeling within the first few minutes that there’s something there.”

High Profile on 06/24/2018

Upcoming Events