Rick Madden asked Cecile Brown out in 1987 because her brother insisted she wanted him to. Cecile went out with Rick because her brother told her he liked her.
"We didn't find out until years later that we had been set up on both sides," Rick says.
Cecile was a student at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in 1987 when Rick started hanging out with her older brother. She was living with her parents and was focused on her studies.
Cecile's brother wasn't quite as academically focused as she was, and she might have discounted his friend Rick right off as being not her type by association. She was impressed with his manners, though, after he walked into their home and gave their burly, intimidating father a proper greeting.
"I just thought, 'Well, it seems like he's been trained right,'" she says.
Cecile's brother told her later that Rick wanted to take her to see a movie.
"I was like, 'Really?'" Cecile says. "My goal was me and Jesus and school. That was kind of my life."
Still, she agreed to go to a movie with Rick. They saw "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and had dinner, and she thought he was funny.
"I was very serious back then. That's just who I was, but he made me laugh," she says.
They started going out more, and Rick often stopped by her house when he got off work in the evenings, keeping visits short so she could study after he left.
They had been dating for about four months when she went with him on an errand that took them inside a jewelry store.
"I was looking at this ring, and I said, 'Oh, this is nice,' and he said, 'Did you want it?'" Cecile says. "I said, 'No.' I was not thinking I wanted to marry this guy. We were just being silly, looking at rings."
Rick went back later and bought the ring for her anyway.
She wore it for several months, but Rick was still hanging out with Cecile's brother, spending time in bars and at parties when they weren't together.
"In my opinion we weren't going anywhere," she says. "He was a partier and I was not. I just wanted to end it because that's who I am. I don't want to play around with people's emotions."
She gave him the ring back, but they stayed friends.
"We would go to Memphis sometimes. We just did fun things together all the time," she says.
Rick dated someone else briefly, but that didn't go well.
"We just ended up talking about Cecile, my ex-girlfriend," he says. "I couldn't move forward with the girl so I knew then that Cecile was the one very special to me."
Cecile was different from anyone else he had dated.
"She liked black and white movies, romantic movies," he says. "And, I mean, she didn't even know how to curse. When she was mad at me one time, she called me a cow. I just had never seen anything like that in my whole life."
In 1990, three years after their first date, Rick stopped going out with Cecile's brother and turned his attention to going out with Cecile.
He gave back the ring she had returned to him when she couldn't see a future for them, dropping to his knee to propose while they were having dinner at Steak and Ale.
"I thought it was time. I really cared about her," Rick says. "I wanted to marry her."
She was surprised by the proposal. She had graduated from UAMS the year before and was planning to get an apartment with a friend.
"I was working and I guess I was planning my life without him because I just didn't know what was going to happen," she says. "But he was being more responsible and all the vacillation had stopped, and he was really my boyfriend."
They exchanged their wedding vows on June 22, 1991, at Pilgrim Valley Missionary Baptist Church in Little Rock. They honeymooned in Jamaica.
The wedding went off without a hitch but Rick's pre-wedding plans went a little askew.
"I wanted a fresh haircut and my mustache done and she told me I should have done it the day before," says Rick, acknowledging he should have listened. "I was at the barbershop and I had to leave because one of my groomsmen had wrecked his car, so my hair wasn't looking so fresh."
Cecile's brother still claims credit for getting them together, she says. She will give him that. Neither she nor Rick is certain they would have taken a chance on each other without the well-meaning deception that led each to believe one was interested in the other.
Rick and Cecile have a 16-year-old daughter, Lauren.
For their 10th anniversary, Rick and Cecile went to Hawaii, and he bought her another ring. She still appreciates the ring bought 34 years ago and returned to her when the time was right.
"That's the ring I still have and still wear," she says. "That was the wedding ring."
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The first time I saw my future spouse:
She says: “I thought he was mannerable. He spoke to my parents.”
He says: “I thought she was cute.”
On our wedding day:
She says: “Rick bought a keychain and it said, ‘I’m taken,’ and I just thought that was so sweet.”
He says: “I was so glad it was official and that was going to be our first night together.”
My advice for a long happy marriage:
She says: “We stood in church and made a vow to the Lord, not to people, even though everybody was watching. It’s been very difficult at times, just because of life, but I’ve stayed committed to that vow that we made.”
He says: “Be loyal and your partnership can last forever. I don’t see myself with anybody else, even after 30 years.”
