LITTLE ROCK — Melanie Freer and Clay Coffman followed each other from the McDonald’s on Cantrell Road in Little Rock to college in Fayetteville, and then to an apartment in Dallas without ever making each other’s acquaintance.
It was a Tumblebus market study that finally brought them together in February 1998.
As a seventh-grader, Clay was a student at The Anthony School. That same year, Melanie, a fourth-grader, was enrolled at nearby Miss Selma’s. Children from both schools were allowed to walk to the McDonald’s on Cantrell each Friday afternoon, so Clay and Melanie were almost certainly there at the same time, although they never spoke.
Their enrollments at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville overlapped, but once again they failed to meet.
They both moved to Dallas after graduation.
“Later when he was looking through my photo album, I was posing outside of my very first apartment in Dallas with my roommate,” Melanie says. “We were posing outside with our number.”
Clay realized that his friend had moved out of that same apartment just weeks before she moved in. And the year before that, he had considered moving into the apartment, too.
“I just decided at the last minute that I was going to go solo, but I was over there all the time,” Clay says.
Clay, who works in real estate investment, moved to Springdale while Melanie was still in Dallas, working in hotel sales and relishing the single life.
When she decided to open a franchise of Tumblebus, a gymnastics studio on wheels for preschoolers, she was hoping to stay in Dallas. Market studies she did there and in Northwest Arkansas, however, pointed her to Springdale.
“I was 27 years old and I wanted to get married someday,” she says. “My thoughts were that everyone in Arkansas gets married right out of high school or right out of college, and I thought I would never get married if I went to Arkansas. But it wasan overpowering experience when I was in Arkansas doing my calls and doing my market study, and it was like God was saying, ‘OK, this is where you belong.’”
She reluctantly started making arrangements to move.
“That led me directly to Clay’s doorstep. He was my landlord,” she says.
Clay was instantly taken with Melanie.
“She just had this little sparkle in her eye and she had this little wink,” he says. “She was excited about herbusiness, but I was excited about her.”
He went to her apartment at 9 p.m. the day she moved in under the pretense of checking to make sure everything was in working order.
“I just thought, ‘Oh my gosh, he’s such a nice landlord!’” Melanie says.
Clay started inviting her to do things - go to church, check out some new spots in town, see movies. But Melanie, focused on starting her business, thought nothing of it. On what would have been their fourth “date,” she realized he was going to kiss her.
“He did, and it was history,” she says.
Clay proposed to Melanie in front of her mother and grandmother while they were having dinner at Mary Maestri’s in Tontitown.
The two were married in Montego Bay, Jamaica, on Dec. 30, 2000.
They sold Melanie’s Tumblebus when they got married. In 2001, they moved to Little Rock, which they still call home.
They have three children: Sam, Kathryn and Will.
Not long after they got together, Clay took Melanie to his mother’s cabin in the Ferndale area. She zeroed in on a 20-by-30-inch watercolor on the wall at the cabin.
“I grabbed Clay’s hand, and I pointed to that painting,” she recalls.
Clay’s mother had chosen one of about 100 photographs tossed on a table by her art teacher as the inspiration forthat painting during a class in 1993.
“It’s my dad’s father and mother’s little country store in Ivan, Ark., that they used to have and that I ran through as a little girl,” Melanie says. “It’s torn down, but it’s my heritage, part of my history - and it’s sitting there on the wall of this cabin, painted four years before we even met. Isn’t that the neatest thing?”
There were torrential downpours on the day of Melanie and Clay’s wedding, and they had to change their room in the resort because of flooding. But when it came time for them to exchange the vows they had written, the clouds parted and the sun came out.
“It was a beautiful day,” Clay says. “It was one of the best days of my life. I feel like we’re soul mates. We see things the same way, and we have a lot of fun together.”The first time I saw my future spouse: He says: “I was mesmerized and she made my heart kind of palpitate. I was just interested in her, period, and whatever she had going on.” She says: “Really, I just thought he was the nicest landlord.” I knew he/she was the one for me when: He says: “I met her, pretty much. I knew early on.” She says: “I discovered he was my best friend. I wanted to do everyday stuff with him like dropping off our dry cleaning and going antique shopping.”If you have an interesting how-wemet story or know someone who does, please call (501) 378-3496 or e-mail:
High Profile, Pages 39 on 01/09/2011