It was August 1994 and Heidi Hoag had recently started her first job, in management training with a rental car company in Dallas, after graduating from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. She had just broken up with the boy she dated all through college. There was a warm front moving in.
"I came home for the weekend because I was a little sad," she says. "I had some friends getting married so I attended their wedding on Saturday and I randomly caught the bouquet -- like, it beat me in the chest."
The next morning, she went to church with her family. "There was this really cute guy singing on the stage with the vocal group."
Barry Brandt had no trouble finding Heidi Hoag in the crowd at Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock.
"He was staring at me, and I was staring at him," she says. "The church is pretty big, so it's pretty obvious that we were both looking at each other."
He couldn't help gazing at her. "She was drop-dead gorgeous," he says.
Heidi was sitting next to her brother, Chance Hoag, who just happened to have met Barry a couple of weeks earlier. When the service was over, he saw Chance and another guy he knew talking and made his way to the back of the room.
Heidi could tell he was heading toward them. "We weren't really just standing around waiting; there was a whole group of people that we were talking to so it was very natural," she says.
They had a brief conversation at church and Heidi went back to Dallas later that day.
"This was pre-Internet. I had to do a little snooping to get her number," Barry says.
Barry, a meteorologist for KARK-TV, Channel 4, at the time, called his friend who had been talking to Heidi's brother after church and asked for Chance's number. He called Chance to ask for Heidi's. Then he called Heidi.
"We hit it off immediately as we were talking and I just said, 'You know, if you're ever back in town we should get together and do something,'" he says. "I don't think it was hard for either of us because neither of us are usually at a loss for words. I don't remember there being any level of awkwardness in the beginning."
They talked on the phone every day after that, and a couple of weeks later Heidi was back in Little Rock.
Barry picked her up at her parents' house for their first date and they went together to pick up his roommate and his roommate's girlfriend for a Razorbacks game, followed by dinner and a party.
"Then he was doing a play at church the next day and I helped him with his lines," Heidi says.
Heidi and Barry found a way to see each other every weekend after that. She wasn't happy in her job in Dallas and her work schedule didn't give her much opportunity to search for another job. Because she wanted to see Barry more often, too, she decided to leave that position and move back to Little Rock and live with her parents for a little while.
"But I moved back here without a job so it was a little bit of a leap of faith," she says.
She quickly found a new job, starting work in pharmaceutical sales in January 1996 -- but she and Barry broke up for a few months.
Not long after their reconciliation, on Heidi's birthday, April 9, 1996, Barry took her to dinner at Cafe Prego and then to St. John Catholic Center.
One of his gifts was several boxes nested inside bigger ones, and when she opened the smallest one she discovered an engagement ring.
"I was going to try to throw her off by proposing on her birthday," he says.
They exchanged their vows in Fellowship Bible Church on Sept. 14, 1996, with about 500 guests looking on, including Barry's family from Kansas and many of their mutual friends.
The newlyweds left for Aruba, but only honeymooned for a day and a half before getting word that Barry's father had died suddenly. They flew back to Kansas immediately to be with his family.
Barry and Heidi have three children -- Benjamin, 14, Sophie, 13, and Georgia, 11.
Heidi, who works in the admissions office of her children's school, wasn't aware that the guy she had her eyes on in church that day in August 1994 was a local network celebrity. Barry has been a meteorologist for KATV, Channel 7, since 1997.
"I really had no idea," she says. "He's eight years older than me and he was on the air while I was in high school, but I was busy with my own life then. What high-schooler watches the weather?"
If you have an interesting how-we-met story or if you know someone who does, please call (501) 378-3496 or email:
cjenkins@arkansasonline.com
High Profile on 06/07/2015