On a warm spring day in 1969, Randy Hughes perched on the rail of a bridge, gathered his courage and asked Karan Bowline about her summer plans.
The bridge spanned a ravine between the girls' dorms and the cafeteria at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia. And on an afternoon when Randy didn't have baseball practice, he joined some of his friends there to talk to the girls who were crossing over the bridge.
The first time I saw my future spouse:
He says: “I thought she was beautiful, and I wanted to ask her out. But I was probably too shy.”
She says: “I thought he was quite a gentleman.”
On our wedding day:
He says: “Both my brothers and my sister told me that I was just as white as a ghost and that they were just waiting to catch me in case I fainted.”
She says: “I wore a wedding dress my mom had made. She made the bridesmaids’ dresses, too.”
My advice for a long happy marriage:
He says: “Communication is important but so is commitment. When you are living in a relationship and you have the assurance that I will never leave you or forsake you and that I will remember my vows, it is in that kind of relationship where love can really just grow.”
She says: “It takes a lot of work to have a happy marriage. It’s not something that falls out of the sky.”
"I was pretty shy," Randy says. "I probably wouldn't [have] been there by myself, but I had a little courage with them."
When he posed his question to Karan, she said she planned to work that summer. She heard him ask another girl the same question as she walked away, and she assumed he hadn't been all that interested in her or her answer.
But, Randy says, "That was the first time I had really noticed her, and I was thinking what a really pretty girl she was and that I wished that I had enough courage to ask her out."
He saw her a few days later, with her roommate at a basketball game, and when her roommate left, he moved down three rows and sat next to her so they could talk.
"We had a nice conversation," he says.
A few days after that, with the encouragement of one of his fraternity brothers, Randy worked up the nerve to call and ask Karan for a date -- and she said yes. They saw Gone With the Wind.
Randy didn't date much, but he was well known on campus because he played baseball and was in a fraternity, so their outing made the campus newspaper.
"Yes, indeed -- spring is here. You can tell by the football games that have opened on the drill field and at the river. The spring sports continue to do their best despite little support and help," says an article in the Henderson Oracle published April 25, 1969. "Last but not least, baseballer Randy Hughes had a date."
Karan began attending all of Randy's home baseball games and even went with friends to some of his games on the road.
They dated throughout the summer and by fall decided it was time for them to marry.
Karan and Randy exchanged their vows on Jan. 16, 1970, at the Church of Christ in Arkadelphia.
"We were poor college kids then and neither of our families had much money, so we just had a small wedding," Karan says.
Both were seniors as newlyweds, and both were working during their final college semester. After graduation, Karan got a job teaching in Delight.
"Randy was a local hero," Karan says. "He had been an outstanding sportsperson, baseball and basketball and had been all-state, and everybody loved him, old and young alike."
Randy stayed on at the menswear store in Arkadelphia where he had been working during school for a while after completing his business degree, and he was accepted to the University of Arkansas School of Law. Instead of studying law, though, he started a business. He opened a sporting goods store in Nashville, and he called basketball games in the evenings and preached on weekends to make extra money while he tried to get the store established. Karan sold Avon and counted laps at the stock car races when she wasn't helping in the store or teaching, by then in Nashville. She retired after 34 years in the classroom.
Randy later opened a printing company, and when it burned he decided to go back to school for a master's degree in elementary education. He retired in 2004 as superintendent of the Blevins School District.
The fact that she and Randy met at all is cause to rejoice, according to Karan.
Her father was in the Air Force and their family moved every three years while she was growing up. She graduated from high school in Puerto Rico and then moved to California, where she worked for a year before her father was transferred to Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville.
"I didn't really know what I was going to do and what direction I wanted to go, so I just moved with them," Karan says.
One of her high school teachers in Puerto Rico had gone to school at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, which is why she chose that location for college, although she picked the less-expensive Henderson campus instead.
Randy went to Harding University in Searcy his freshman year, but he was homesick and opted to transfer to Henderson after that because it was closer to Delight, thus making it easier for him to visit his mother on weekends.
"I look back on my life, and I can see the Lord directing my steps," Karan says. "He kind of nudged me in this direction and that direction, and that's why I met Randy."
Randy and Karan, who have two sons and four grandchildren, live in Maumelle now.
"On our way to Delight, we stopped by that bridge at Henderson. It is still there, in use," Randy says. "And no doubt guys are still sitting on the rails hoping to find the 'right' one like I did."
If you have an interesting how-we-met story or if you know someone who does, please call (501) 425-7228 or email:
High Profile on 01/26/2020