When Tiffinie Recla walked into the student union where Mark Martin was playing pool, he suddenly became less focused on his next shot and more focused on whether he might have a shot at a date with her.
They were both freshmen in 1994, when she showed up in the student union at Arkansas State University at Beebe.
"Everyone hung out in the student union," Tiffinie says. "It was a big room with a pool table."
Tiffinie, whose long, straight, dark hair and dark complexion were the features that first caught Mark's eye, noticed Mark because of his red hair and fair skin.
"I was just sitting there watching everybody else because I didn't play pool," she says. "I remember thinking he was cute, but I had a boyfriend."
Mark and Tiffinie had mutual friends who hung out there and at Beezer's, a family-friendly pool hall in town, and they got to know each other better by being in the same places.
Almost a year after they met, when Tiffinie and her boyfriend broke up, Mark asked her out.
"I don't really remember him asking me out," she says. "I'm sure it was all nonchalant."
They were going to ride four-wheelers at his house in Griffithville, just outside Searcy, and so Tiffinie wouldn't get lost she followed him from a gas station just off Interstate 40.
"I'm no good with directions," she says.
That afternoon, they had what can be best described as a dirty first date -- literally.
"I had never been to his house before, never met his family," Tiffinie says, "but we got on the four-wheelers and we got muddy from head to toe. I had to go in his house and take a shower. His mom insisted, before I drove home. I just remember standing in the shower and thinking, 'This is weird.'"
Everything about their first date was atypical for Tiffinie.
"I was kind of a girly girl -- I was on the dance team and I took dance classes. That was pretty much my life growing up," Tiffinie says.
She had fun, though. On subsequent dates, they fished.
"It was me and her in a 14-foot, flat-bottom boat in the middle of a crummy lake in Des Arc," Mark says.
Tiffinie wasn't a fan, but she made the best of it.
"I wanted to talk and he would get mad. I had to be quiet and be still and if you've ever sat next to me at a table you know I can't be quiet," she says. "I love to go to state parks and walk on trails and hike and find stuff, so while we were fishing I could do that."
More to Tiffinie's liking, she and Mark also colored in coloring books and worked puzzles together, and they saw several movies while they were in college together.
Both transferred to Arkansas State University at Jonesboro a year after they started dating, where Mark majored in chemistry and Tiffinie majored in business administration.
When their third anniversary of dating rolled around, Tiffinie was home in Cabot for the summer and Mark was in Jonesboro. They decided to meet in the middle to celebrate that milestone.
"In Newport, a historic river town," Mark explains. "We had met in the middle a couple of times to have supper or go to the park."
They met at Pizza Hut. Tiffinie gave Mark his anniversary gift outside before they went in to eat. Mark gave her a card.
"It was a lame 'Happy Anniversary' card," he says.
Tiffinie read it, thanked him and tucked it back in its envelope.
"He was looking at me and I was like, 'What?' And he said, 'Did you read the card?'" she says.
He prompted her to look at the back.
"You know, some people get down on one knee and do all kinds of elaborate proposals. I wrote 'Will you marry me?' on the back of a cheesy anniversary card and gave it to her in the parking lot of a Pizza Hut in Newport," Mark quips.
They were married a year later, on Sept. 4, 1999, at Bethel Baptist Church in Cabot.
Mark and Tiffinie haven't been fishing lately, mostly because there's no time. Their sons, Drake and Kade, keep them on the BMX track and the soccer field almost year-round. Mark, who works in business sales with AT&T, is a BMX track operator on the side.
Tiffinie teaches first grade at Warren Dupree Elementary in Jacksonville. She still enjoys hiking, and that's something the family does together when the opportunity arises.
"Our kids have a shared love of the outdoors and on an afternoon when we're not racing and not playing soccer that's something we like to do," Mark says.
Mark says Tiffinie was a city girl, comparatively speaking, when they met.
"She was an MC Hammer-pant, DC Talk-going-to-watch, yuppy kid," Mark says, affectionately. "She's super social and I'm just the opposite -- anti-social. She's 100 percent emotional and I'm zero percent emotional. Two of me couldn't get along, and two of her couldn't get along. It takes opposites to work."
The first time I met my future spouse:
She says: “I asked a girl who was there who he was. I don’t even think she knew. It was just kind of like, ‘Hey, who’s that guy?’”
He says: “It was kind of like … do you remember the original Batman movie with Michael Keaton, when he goes, who is that? And they go, it’s Vicki Vale? I was like, ‘Who is that?!’”
On our wedding day:
She says: “I was a nervous wreck because I was from Cabot and my wedding planners were from Jonesboro and they were driving to Cabot and they couldn’t find the church.”
He says: “I wish I had shaved the mustache.”
My advice for a long happy marriage:
She says: “You have to love unconditionally and you can’t be selfish. You’ve got to be willing to give and take or it’s not going to work.”
He says: “I’m learning not to argue the small stuff.”
High Profile on 12/10/2017