Whether Gina Khoury and V.P. Parker were star-crossed lovers or simply lovers who were sometimes crossways wasn't clear for years -- and then it was.
Gina was a freshman at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 1993. V.P., a junior, was the student orientation leader for her group.
The first time I saw my future spouse:
She says: “I thought he was charismatic.”
He says: “I noticed her energetic and captivating smile.”
My advice for a lasting marriage is:
She says: “Sometimes you have to agree to disagree.”
He says: “Where you spend your time and with whom will always be the telltale sign of what you see as a priority. Be more than companions, be partners that have strategic, visionary, loving, caring adventurous conversations and journeys.”
"I always asked everyone a question like, 'What flavor of ice cream would you be?' or 'What kind of candy bar would you be?'" V.P. says. "She said strawberry. I remember her answer but only because I thought, 'She's a looker!' And then I moved on."
Gina noticed him then but didn't consider him dating material. He was an upperclassman and their introduction was brief. She was impressed enough with the way he carried himself, though, that she pointed him out to a friend as the kind of guy she wanted to go out with.
They were both in the Chancellor's Leadership program at UALR, and through that close-knit group of students they got to know each other a little better. Writing Center internships provided them more time to talk.
"We were in there helping people with computers, which were really new then," he says.
They were on the same shift, which gave V.P., newly single, a chance to notice Gina's eclectic style.
"Gina was someone who was 'in the raw' beautiful," he says. "She didn't wear makeup and she didn't spend a whole lot of time saying 'I'm going to look pretty' before she walked out the door -- she was just naturally pretty. She seemed a little 'alternative.'"
He strolled past her one day and proclaimed, "You are beautiful."
"My response was the same as it always is when he says random stuff like that, which is, 'What can you possibly expect me to say in response?' When I don't know what someone's motive is, I don't like being put on the spot," says Gina, although she did muster a humble thanks.
They started going to lunch together at a buffet near campus. V.P. paid, and it became a regular thing, but these were friendly outings, not romantic encounters.
When V.P. asked her to continue one of their lunch conversations over dinner, she hesitated.
Gina, who is half Arabic and half white, had never dated anyone outside her ethnicity. And she was aware that interracial dating wasn't embraced, either by the community or by her family.
"But I also knew that I had been getting to know this guy for a couple of months and that we really got along," she says. "The only reason I would have said no was because of race and that wasn't, in my opinion, any reason to say no."
After they had dinner, they went for a walk and Gina grabbed V.P.'s hand, signaling that she was open to more than friendship.
Their early relationship was tumultuous -- on-again, off-again, with V.P. wanting more when Gina's interest waned and vice versa. V.P. had been married before and had a child, Devin, now 24, which added a bit to their relationship's complexities.
When Gina left Little Rock for a White House internship under President Bill Clinton, her relationship status with V.P. was still unclear. She came back to finish her degree, and when she graduated in 1997 she tried to end things with V.P. He asked her to marry him then, but she ignored the question.
"It was an emotional ask," he admits. "I was trying to lock her in."
They broke up but began bumping into each other -- through work, at computer training where he was the instructor, even at a workout boot camp.
At the end of 2000, seemingly out of the blue, Gina called V.P. He canceled his previously scheduled plans to hang out with her.
"I was like, 'I'm not missing this opportunity.' She was actually talking to me," he says.
He proposed soon after they got back together. Gina still wasn't sure he meant it, and she said no.
"After the second time he said, 'I'm going to ask you one more time. If you tell me no then, I'm not ever asking again," recalls Gina.
He proposed on Valentine's Day 2001, going to her office and getting down on one knee in front of her friends. That time she said yes.
They exchanged their vows on May 25, 2001, on the front lawn of their house in downtown Little Rock. In addition to Devin, they have four children: Xander, 14, Xavier, 12, Kamilla, 10, and Lillie, 9.
Marriage has brought them peace and partnership. Weekly calendar calibration meetings keep them in sync.
"I felt really comfortable with it," she says of their wedding day. "I knew I was marrying someone that I loved, that I cared about and that, underneath it all, we were friends, which to me is the foundation of everything and is probably one of the reasons that we kept pulling back together."
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High Profile on 03/05/2017