A little wiretapping and a less than harmonious conversation with another man were the catalyst for romance in 1986 for Beth Guerin and the office telephone installation tech.
He had certainly noticed her. The really cute girl who was answering phones part time in the doctor's office? Yes, 19-year-old Darrin Adcock had noticed her. He was doing a job for a small telecommunications company in Hot Springs, and he likely would have left without exchanging a word with her had he not made a small mistake first.
"I had my test set and I accidentally clicked onto the line that she was on. And I listened. Maybe I shouldn't have, but I did," Darrin says. "I really didn't mean to do that, but in doing so I heard her talking to her then-boyfriend and realized her and her boyfriend were not getting along and I thought, 'Well, this is kind of neat.'"
Beth was wearing a T-shirt that day from the Loverboy concert she had gone to with her sister and brother-in-law. Darrin had been to that concert, too! He mentioned that in a note he left on her car. He explained to Beth who he was and ended his letter by telling her he would like to get to know her better. He suggested she call him if she wanted to and scrawled his number.
Beth was still a senior in high school. She was reared by parents who believed boys should call girls and not the other way around. In fact, "I had to get permission from my mom to please let me call him."
Beth can't remember ever having another conversation with the troublesome boyfriend. The next weekend, she went with Darrin to Barton Coliseum in Little Rock to see a monster truck show.
"That was a big deal because I was this little 17-year-old girl who didn't have a lot of freedom," she says. "I was getting to go to Little Rock with him for this monster truck show."
Beth suspects that her mother, who worked in the doctor's office as well, might have done some sleuthing to make sure he was a safe escort before she granted permission.
"I think there were probably some things going on in the background that we didn't know about because I can't imagine my mother just letting me go off with this guy I had just barely met without fully checking him out," she says.
They spent most of the next three and a half years working and spending time with each other's families and friends.
"We watched a whole lot of movies during that time. I think we had memberships at all the video stores in town and we were on a first-name basis with all the owners," she says.
They went from video store to video store to pick up movies they could watch when they weren't working and when Beth wasn't in school. During that time, she completed two associate degrees at National Park Community College and got a job at Weyerhaeuser.
They picked out engagement rings together.
"It's not that Darrin doesn't have good taste, but it was something that I was hopefully going to wear for the rest of my life and I sort of wanted a little bit of say in it," she says.
But what she didn't have a say in was when she got the ring.
"I knew we had picked it but I didn't know when he was going to propose. I think I kind of bugged him about when he was going to propose, when he was going to give it to me," she says.
It took him a couple of weeks.
"I didn't have cold feet, I don't think. I just needed some time, I guess," he says.
They were married on April 7, 1990, in Bread of Life Pentecostal Church in Hot Springs, the church where Beth grew up.
"I think we must have known early on that we were going to get married because we did a lot of saving on our own," Beth says. "We were both working full time. I started sticking money back and he started sticking money back. What we wanted to do was buy a house. That was our plan."
Now that they've done that and now that their sons -- Kyle, 20, a student at Arkansas State University at Jonesboro, and Keith, 17 -- are mostly grown, they enjoy riding off into the sunset together on their Harley-Davidson.
Darrin, who owns his own company, Access Communication Solutions, might feel a tad guilty still about eavesdropping on Beth all those years ago. "I clicked on one of the lines she was talking on. I didn't mean to do that. But in doing so I heard her talking to her then boyfriend and realized she was having some issues with him. I thought, 'Well, this is a perfect opportunity,' [and] it sure was."
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High Profile on 03/15/2015