RIGHT TIME RIGHT PLACE

She ran from NYC and her love life took flight

Annis and Edward Reinkoester recently celebrated their 60th anniversary. Annis met Edward after moving to Denver to get away from a couple of other suitors. “The first thing I do is I run into Ed and I fall in love with him. I fall in love with the tall man with blond hair and blue eyes,” says Annis.
Annis and Edward Reinkoester recently celebrated their 60th anniversary. Annis met Edward after moving to Denver to get away from a couple of other suitors. “The first thing I do is I run into Ed and I fall in love with him. I fall in love with the tall man with blond hair and blue eyes,” says Annis.

Annis Miller had just left a job in New York City to get away from the young men who were chasing her. She ran practically straight into the arms of Edward C. Reinkoester.

Annis fell madly in love with Edward and married him just three months after their first date.

The first time I saw my future spouse:

She says: “I fell in love.”

He says: “I thought she was really pretty.”

On our wedding day:

She says: “I wasn’t nervous at all. I was just happy and I had a big smile.”

He says: “I wasn’t nervous. Not really.”

My advice for a long happy marriage is:

She says: “Give in.”

He says: “It’s give and take and we didn’t ever have any problems. That kept us going, I guess.”

Edward, a pilot for Frontier Airlines in Denver in 1958, had gone to the dentist on the morning of the day they met. His dentist was also a friend, and they decided to get lunch at a diner across the street from the office after his appointment.

Annis happened to be there then, eating with her friends, one of whom was a flight attendant who knew Edward and who pointed out that Edward and Annis had something in common.

"We started talking because we're both from Ohio," says Annis.

Annis grew up in Portsmouth, Ohio; Edward is from Cleveland.

Their tables were fairly close together and after the brief introduction they found plenty to chat about.

"He was good-looking. He had very blue eyes, and I was pretty," says Annis, laughing in a self-deprecating way. "I thought he was nice. It was love at first sight for me."

Edward thought Annis, with her dark hair and petite figure, was stunning. She was 21 and he was 29.

He called her a couple of days later and asked her for a date.

Neither can say where they went on that first evening alone -- probably dinner or a movie, Edward says. Annis liked to bowl, and was good at it, but Edward claims he wasn't and that probably wasn't what they chose to do that night.

"It was more than 60 years ago, you know," says Edward. "It was so long ago that I don't remember too much."

But even if the details are lost, Edward and Annis are clear on the basics -- they were both smitten right from takeoff.

Annis, especially, realizes the irony of the situation.

She had worked as a secretary for a major television network in New York, but she had quit her job and fled the city because of the young men in that city who wanted more of a relationship than she did.

"There were a couple of them there that wanted to marry me and I wasn't ready to get married," she says. "These other guys were nice guys, but ... I liked them, but I wasn't in love with them. All I know is I fell in love with him. I was in love with him."

She had just recently arrived in Denver, where she had started a new secretarial job, when she met Edward in the diner over lunch.

"I had moved to Denver because I heard there were a lot of women and I could get away from men," she says. "The first thing I do is I run into Ed and I fall in love with him. I fall in love with the tall man with blond hair and blue eyes."

Three months after their first date, Edward proposed and Annis immediately accepted.

They exchanged their vows on Nov. 29, 1958, in First Presbyterian Church in Portsmouth, with a reception at the town country club following the ceremony.

Edward's mother and sister made it to the wedding from their home in Shaker Heights, Ohio, though they had to drive through a blizzard to get there.

There wasn't, fortunately, much snow in Portsmouth that day.

"It was kind of a large wedding," says Edward.

Annis was the first of the six children in her family to marry. All five of her siblings were in the wedding party and almost everyone from her large family was in attendance.

Their courtship had been short but the Miller family felt like they knew all they needed to know about the man who was marrying into it.

"Her father had wondered who I was," says Edward.

Annis's father, Ward Miller, was a Realtor and later a congressman from Ohio, and he had gone so far as to have his daughter's suitor investigated.

Edward had been in the U.S. Air Force before he became a pilot -- and before he met Annis -- and two years after he married her, he joined the Air Force again.

"I guess we moved around a little bit," says Edward.

The first station the couple called home was Ellsworth Air Force Base in Ellsworth, S.D., and one of their sons points out that he attended seven schools in 12 years.

"We had three sons all born in different states," says Annis.

Their son Edward Reinkoester lives in Hot Springs; son James Reinkoester lives in Charlotte, N.C.; and son Ward Reinkoester lives in Nashville, Tenn. They also have two grandchildren, Whitney Reinkoester and Ashley Reinkoester.

Annis says her family was content to be together in all of their various homes in all the various Air Force bases where her husband served as an officer until he retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1977.

They moved to Hot Springs from Annapolis, Md. In June 1993.

"We always just got along," she says. "We have had a long happy marriage."

If you have an interesting how-we-met story or if you know someone who does, please call (501) 425-7228 or email:

kimdishongh@gmail.com

photo

Special to the Democrat-Gazette

Edward Reinkoester and Annis Miller were married on Nov. 29, 1958, in Portsmouth, Ohio. They met in a diner in Denver, where he was a pilot and she had a friend who was a flight attendant. “I was very happy,” he says of the day they were wed. “I was a happy guy.”

High Profile on 12/09/2018

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