When Lindsey Sehon went to pick up a bearded dragon to be the class pet for the second-graders she was teaching, she met a guy, who happened to have a beard, in the pet store.
Lindsey, who was teaching in the Little Rock School District in early 2017, had actually met Zackary Ebarb briefly at the Missionary Baptist Student Fellowship at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
The first time I saw my future spouse:
She says: “I thought he was cute. But I was also intimidated because he was in school to be a pastor.”
He says: “I thought she was pretty — but I thought she might be weird.”
On our wedding day:
She says: “I was probably giddy. I don’t think I’ve ever been that happy.”
He says: “I had to go buy new pants.”
My advice for a long happy marriage:
She says: “Be honest about everything, about your feelings, about your thoughts. It’s easy to hold onto things, and they might keep happening if you’re not honest about them.”
He says: “Pay attention to your spouse — not your children, not your job, not anything else. Pay attention to your spouse.”
"I think we met twice, and just enough to say, 'Hi, how are you?' and then he stopped going," Lindsey says.
That had been about a year and a half earlier, but Zack, then a seminary student who was working in the pet store part time, has an uncanny knack for remembering names.
"I'm odd in that I remember just about everybody," Zack says.
Lindsey didn't recognize him right away.
"When I was in the store, he said, 'Hi, Lindsey,'" she says, "and, you know, that always catches you off guard. I said, 'Um, how do you know my name?'"
He explained, and they chatted for about five minutes while he gathered the crickets she would need to feed her class pet.
"About four hours later, her boss came in with a sick beta [fish]," Zack says, who had realized their association because of name badges and shirt logos from the same school. "We talked about Lindsey for a few minutes."
That night, Lindsey sent Zack a Facebook friend request. They talked through Facebook Messenger for a while and then decided to go out.
They went to church together the next Wednesday night.
"Then after church, we went to get frozen yogurt at Yogurt Mountain," Lindsey says. "We stayed there until they closed, and we weren't done talking and so then we just pulled in to park at the Sonic that's over there."
On Saturdays, they often went to Lake Catherine and other places for hiking and swimming. Over spring break, Lindsey and Zack and Lindsey's nieces and nephews spent the day at Petit Jean Mountain.
"We did a lot of outdoor things," Lindsey says.
Zack was guest preaching at churches all over the state at the time, and Lindsey would go with him on Sundays, and occasionally on Wednesdays, to various sites.
"A lot of times it would be six hours in the car, just talking," Lindsey says. "You get to know each other very quickly."
On those long Sunday drives, they talked about the future.
"We knew that we were going to get married," she says.
Lindsey told Zack that if he was going to propose she wanted to make sure she had her nails done first, so she had a manicure ... and then she waited.
Zack started brainstorming about how he would ask her to marry him, first considering that he might involve the students in her class at school. The logistics of that were complex, though, so he moved on to plan B.
On Easter Sunday, Lindsey went with him to Benton, where he filled in for a pastor during the morning service. After church, they went to her family's home for lunch.
"We always had lunch together on Sundays," she says.
When they were finished eating, he asked if she wanted to do some shopping -- and that's when he found a quiet moment to pop the question, just three months after their first date.
"We were just walking and his hands started shaking and I thought, 'Oh my goodness, he's about to ask me to marry him,'" she says. "He's never nervous, but he was shaking like a leaf."
They exchanged their vows on July 29, 2017, at Heritage Baptist Temple in Little Rock.
Lindsey didn't know until earlier this year that Zack had a wardrobe snafu on their wedding day. She had asked him to try on his jacket before the ceremony, but he hadn't tried on his pants; when he did, he discovered they were too snug.
He and his mother had done a quick shopping trip, disaster had been avoided, and she was none the wiser.
Lindsey and Zack live in Forrest City, where he is pastor of Landmark Baptist Church. She teaches first grade at Wynne Elementary. They have an 11-week-old daughter, Ember.
Lindsey's students weren't included in Zack's proposal but they, along with school staff and parents, did give her a wedding shower.
Lindsey still has the bearded dragon, Lucy, who now has a partner, Ricky.
Zack, the bearded guy is, of course, now a big part of Lindsey's life.
She knew he was the right guy for her when they visited his grandparents' house in Ozark, which needed several repairs and improvements to be done so it could be sold.
"I started to imagine the two of us working together on the projects," Lindsey says.
The house sold shortly after Lindsey and Zack were married, so they didn't get a chance to complete any of those projects together.
"We have worked on numerous projects here, though," she says. "We have built flower beds, chicken coops, ponds and furniture. It takes lots of communication, but it's so nice to see the finished product."
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High Profile on 04/12/2020