Neva Duke and Lud Beckman were neighbors for 33 years, and during that time they thought of each other only as friends.
They and their spouses had lunch together often and played dominoes and cards together throughout the week.
The first time I saw my future spouse:
He says: “Being neighbors and living across the street, the first time I saw her was maybe when she was working in the yard or something like that.”
She says: “When he and his wife moved across the street in 1967, we just asked each other questions about each other and that’s how we got to be friends.”
On our wedding day:
He says: “The wedding was in a judge’s office, and he had such wonderful comments to us when we got married. He was so comforting … this was kind of a hard thing. And then we went out to eat at a place that we had been to many times to celebrate — it was a simple thing.”
She says: “My thoughts were on all the little decisions we had to make, questions like ‘Where would we live, what would we do?’”
My advice for a lasting marriage is:
He says: “Tell each other you love each other every day, and tell her how special she is in your life.”
She says: “Go to bed happy, and say I love you every day.”
"Our neighborhood was very friendly, and several of us did things together," Neva says.
Lud was a finance officer in the Army at Fort Sill, Okla., for the first few years after he and his wife, Marge, moved to the neighborhood. After that he taught sixth grade. Neva was busy with her job as a civil service employee -- a budget analyst -- at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, and at Fort Sill. The Beckmans and the Dukes were raising two children each.
"We were so busy all those years with our children and our careers that we didn't see each other every day," Neva says.
Neva saw Lud walk through her office building at Fort Sill a few times on his way to meetings upstairs and thought he was handsome, but that was as far as her thought process went.
"I just think uniforms make any man look so much nicer," she says.
Lud's wife, Marge, died of a heart attack in 1986. He retired from teaching two years later and then traveled around the country with his three sisters in his motor home for the next 10 or so years, volunteering at the local hospital and at church when he was home.
Neva's husband, John, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in the early 1990s, and he died about 10 years later. They had been married 54 years when he died.
Lud and his children took Neva out to eat every week or so while her husband was in a nursing home. It was "sort of a neighborly thing," Lud says. "We would go to the Cracker Barrel or somewhere like that and have lunch and then just take her back home."
After her husband's death, Lud and Neva continued spending time together as friends.
When his granddaughter visited him she often ran across the street to visit with Neva. "She would be gone for an hour or two," he says.
Lud knew what it was like to be on your own and had helped Neva where he could. He helped her install an alarm system and made several small repairs. He found that he enjoyed her company. "Several things came up that needed a man's help, and before I knew it I had decided I fell in love with this beautiful lady," he says.
Says Lud: "All that time it was just neighbors and friends, and when her spouse died, the neighbors and I began to help her. I began to say, 'Hey, maybe there's something here.' And there was."
They talked about marriage and drove to Wichita Falls to pick out an engagement ring. A couple of days after their road trip, Lud dropped to a knee and proposed in Neva's living room.
"We did not want to wait too long because we were both in our early 70s, and time was getting by, and we just felt a warm loving feeling for each other," Lud says. They had gotten to know each other through 33 years of good times and bad times.
Their families urged them to have a church wedding, but they didn't want the fuss.
"One day we just decided, 'Let's go to Wichita Falls and get married the next day.' We drove down to Wichita Falls, to the courthouse there, and we got the judge, and we got married," Lud says.
They exchanged their vows on Feb. 8, 2001, and honeymooned in San Antonio.
One of Neva and Lud's first big decisions together was about where to live -- his house or hers. They chose his, and hers sold to the first family who came to see it.
Neva and Lud moved to Little Rock about a year ago to be near her daughter and son -- Nancy Moore and Mike Duke -- as well as her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
"Lud and I have had the most wonderful marriage for older people that there ever was. It's just been a dream come true," Neva says. "It just seems to me that it happened to me over a period of time, and there was genuine love there when we got married. We don't like to be separated from each other, not even overnight."
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High Profile on 10/01/2017