Molly Madden's new boyfriend wanted her to meet his friends, so he took her to a gathering. That's where she was introduced to her future husband.
It was 1994, and Molly had moved from Boulder, Colo., to Searcy to go to Harding University.
The first time I saw my future spouse:
She says: “I thought he was just a quiet guy sitting in the corner by himself.”
He says: “I knew we were going to have something. I wasn’t sure what it was.”
My best marriage advice is:
She says: “Marriage should be easy. It should be a haven. Where your spouse is should be home; it should feel good to be there.”
He says: “Trust. And be trustworthy.”
On our wedding day:
She says: “I was a mess. I wish I had been more focused on the significance of the day than on the details of the event.”
He says: “I wasn’t nervous at all. I was really at peace with everything. Before that I hadn’t been nervous about getting married, just about the whole event.”
The freshman was introduced to each of the 10 or so people who were there, and although she didn't have much of a conversation with Eric "Chach" Bursey, she had ample opportunity to get to know him better over the next few months because Chach and her boyfriend were good friends.
"The three of us were thick as thieves," Chach says.
They spent hours at Waffle House, drinking coffee and chatting about life. They drove around in Chach's Bronco, "The Beast," listening to music and seeing friends and whatever else they could find to do in their rather conservative, quiet college town.
For the record, Chach thought the guy Molly was dating was a stellar bud.
"He was a better friend than he was a boyfriend," Chach says.
That guy graduated from college and moved away, but Chach and Molly kept hanging out.
"He was that guy who was always your friend," she says of Chach. "He was funny, and he was kind of in love with this girl that we knew."
But each was the other's confidante, even as Molly dated a string of suitors, then got serious about another guy on campus and Chach pined after a mutual friend.
"There were other guys, but Chach and I were just glued together," she says. "We were just best, best, best friends."
As they prepared to go home for a summer break, Molly gave Chach a stern talking to about pinning his hopes on someone who didn't reciprocate.
"You have to be happy with yourself," she told him.
Molly returned to Harding in the fall to new classes -- and a new Chach.
"He was really kind of a different person," she says. "He had decided to do what he wanted to do and be himself and just be happy. And he did start becoming attractive to me."
In straightforward fashion, Molly told Chach and the guy she had been dating, who'd moved away from Searcy by then, about these new feelings. Her friends were pulling for Chach.
"People had started calling us things like 'Cholly' because we were just always together and we always had the best time," she says. "One of our good friends told me, 'You don't come across a friendship like that, where you're happy together all of the time for so many years. That just doesn't happen.'"
As Molly struggled with whether to explore a new and different kind of relationship with her best friend or maintain status quo with the guy she was dating long-distance, one friend urged her to test the waters with Chach. Just kiss him, the friend recommended.
"I was like, 'I don't know. Can I just do that?'" she says. "I gave it a shot, but I don't think he really caught on. So he was dropping me at the dorm for curfew one night, and I really kissed him. He kind of just was silent. I was like, 'I just kissed you.'"
The shock of it eventually wore off.
Their relationship morphed into something even better than it had been.
Chach graduated from Harding in spring 1998 and went home to Austin, Texas, to look for work. Molly stayed in Arkansas, working first as a substitute teacher, then a full-time teacher.
Chach bought a diamond and ordered an engagement ring that was to arrive in the mail the day before Molly got to Austin for a visit. There was a mix-up, and the ring was not even close to what he expected. The jeweler was willing to rectify the situation, but that meant sending the designs for the piece to a jeweler in Austin and waiting for the ring to be handcrafted. It was, of course, not ready on the night he planned to pop the question over dinner. It was delivered the day before she was to return to Little Rock.
They were married a few months later, on July 3, 1999, in Ryssby Church in Longmont, Colo.
Chach is a graphic designer and photographer. Molly is a stay-at-home mom to their son, 3-year-old Shep.
Things haven't always been easy for the Burseys, who now live in Little Rock, but they have a strong foundation.
"We were so close anyway, it was never a question of whether we should continue our relationship," Molly says of their early days. "I thought, 'Who do I go to when I'm sad? Who do I go to when I'm happy? Who makes me laugh the most? Who do I have the most fun with?' That was always Chach."
If you have an interesting how-we-met story or know someone who does, please call (501) 378-3496 or email:
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High Profile on 08/17/2014