RIGHT TIME RIGHT PLACE

IT guy set up her email, she set her sights on him

Alan and Audra Jones talked through work for a couple of months before they met in person. They are now parents to Aidan, 15, and Allyson, 8.
Alan and Audra Jones talked through work for a couple of months before they met in person. They are now parents to Aidan, 15, and Allyson, 8.

The brief time during which Alan Jones and Audra Johnson were both employed by the same organization, albeit in different cities, has led to their happily ever after.

Alan was working in information technology for Heifer International, and when Audra went to work for the branch office in Irving, Texas, he set up Audra's email by phone from his office in Little Rock.

The first time I saw my future spouse:

He says: “I remember her hair being blonder than it was in the pictures I had seen of her.”

She says: “I thought he was super skinny.”

On our wedding day:

He says: “There was a really nice steak restaurant in the hotel and my folks had arranged for a nice dinner for the whole wedding party there.”

She says: “They had ordered us a two-tiered cake, too. It was very sweet.”

My advice for a long happy marriage:

He says: “When she asks for something it’s important to say, ‘Yes, dear.’ Communication is important.”

She says: “Try not to take life too seriously; try to see the humor in things. He never lets me go to bed angry. And never kick your husband under the table unless you look under there first.”

All she knew about Alan then was what her boss told her.

"She said he was about my age, he was single and he had red hair," Audra says. She was 28, and he was 27. "I had a thing for red hair."

They talked on the phone occasionally, mostly about work issues at first, and Alan gave her his personal instant messaging address so she could get in touch quickly if she needed help.

"Back then, people didn't have work IM addresses in many cases, so she had my personal instant messaging," says Alan, who had shared that address with other colleagues as well. "We were on and off there talking about odds and ends."

They began talking about random, everyday matters, just enjoying each other's company.

Alan went to Guatemala for work about two weeks after they met, and while he was gone, the branch office closed. She got in touch with him when he got back and told him she was looking for a new job.

"I said, 'But we can still talk or chat or whatever,'" she says.

Alan was fine with that.

"It wasn't the stuff like what you see on The Bachelor or something like that it was more of, 'Well, I'm doing laundry, what are you doing? How do you do your laundry?' -- that mundane type stuff," he says.

They described their apartments to each other and discussed their days.

"It seemed like we could just talk about anything and keep a conversation going for three hours on the phone," Audra says.

As Audra's birthday approached in November, she asked him if he would like to come to Dallas to visit.

"He said, 'What? I'm not going to come visit you. You're a stranger,'" Audra laughs.

Alan joked about the show Catfish, featuring characters who create fake online personas to trick people into falling in love, and he said that he didn't, after all, really know who she was. But they talked about it some more, and he decided it would be OK for him to visit.

"I was just hoping she wasn't going to kill me," he quips.

Audra picked Alan up at the airport when he arrived and they went out for pizza and talked some more.

The next morning, Audra woke up feeling awful, struck by some sort of stomach flu or food poisoning. Alan took care of her all weekend.

"It was very sweet," she says. "I barely knew he was there, I felt so bad, but he still took care of me. He still takes care of me."

He flew home at the end of the weekend and their conversations continued.

"I can't say that I knew where this was going, especially after the way that went," Alan jokes, "but people get sick and I wasn't going to say, 'Well, I'm not going to see her again.' I don't think it ever crossed my mind that I wasn't going to talk to her again."

Audra flew to Little Rock to visit Alan in December.

"I was used to living in a city without much greenery and I said, 'This is absolutely beautiful,'" she says of her first trip to Arkansas.

They spent time at Pinnacle Mountain and the Old Mill and other parks while she was in town so she could take in the natural beauty of the state.

When he was in Dallas, they sometimes drove to other parts of Texas to see Audra's family.

"We're both sort of homebodies," Alan says. "We liked to watch movies and things like that."

They got engaged about a year and a half after they met.

"I had said, 'We're running up the phone bills, we're spending a lot on airfare. Is this going anywhere?'" Audra says. "He teased me by saying we could get married on Oct. 35 or something like that. He likes to research something to the max before he commits, so I was kind of pushing him to figure it out."

She was walking into work one morning when he called.

"He said, 'Do you want to get married next weekend?'" Audra says. "I said, 'Well, probably not next weekend. Give me two weeks.'"

They exchanged their vows on May 4, 2002, in the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

Audra and Alan live in Little Rock with their two children -- Aidan, 15, and Allyson, 8.

Audra marvels that a chance encounter at a job she held only briefly led to the life and family they have now.

"I just feel like we were there at the right time at the right place and our paths crossed where they wouldn't have crossed otherwise," Audra says. "I feel like it was just divine intervention."

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

Audra Johnson and Alan Jones were married on May 4, 2002, at Circus Circus Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. They met through work, even though they were in different cities, and got to know each other online. “I just feel like we were there at the right time at the right place and our paths crossed where they wouldn’t have crossed otherwise,” Audra says. “I feel like it was just divine intervention.”

High Profile on 04/14/2019

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