Tamika Silverman's friend told her Quincy Edwards thought she was cute.
Quincy says it was a setup.
"Our mutual friend was trying to play love connection, I think," he says. "She was like, 'How does Tamika look to you? What do you think?' I was like, 'I don't know. She's cute. She's all right.' And that's how it started -- she went back and told Tamika I thought she was cute."
It was May 1995, and Tamika and Quincy were both juniors at J.A. Fair High School in Little Rock. They had been in journalism class together all year by this time, but Tamika hadn't noticed Quincy.
He understands.
"I always thought she was a nerd. I always thought she would be really cute if she wasn't such a bookworm," he quips.
Tamika thought Quincy was all the cuter when she learned a little about him.
"I found out he had a car and I didn't have a car so I was like, 'Well, I think he's cute, too,'" she says.
Their matchmaking friend asked if she could borrow Quincy's car, a 1983 Buick Regal Ltd., the day she tried to set them up, and then invited Tamika to tag along.
"I was glad I got to go because I wanted to check out his wheels since I didn't have any wheels," Tamika says. "Two walks don't make a ride so it was really good that this young man had a vehicle."
The girls took his car to Joe's, a store close to the high school that was popular with students. That vehicle was Quincy's prized possession but he didn't mind letting his friend borrow it.
It didn't hurt that she agreed to take him a chili dog, one of Joe's specialties. He didn't know Tamika was going until they returned.
"She came back later and said, 'I think I left my jacket in your car,'" he says.
Whether that was a ploy to see him again or not is up for debate, but he did ask her for a date. They had breakfast together at IHOP the next morning.
"She wasted my money," Quincy quips. "She didn't even eat the food."
She nibbled, uncomfortable eating in front of him.
"Twenty-three years later I eat all of my food and all of his food," she laughs.
They were together fairly consistently through high school, aside from a short break after Tamika's mother told her she couldn't see him if he wasn't a Christian. He started going to church, and they were soon back together.
They enjoyed simple activities -- going to parks, bowling and people-watching.
"We've always been old souls," she says.
The first time I saw my future spouse:
He says: “I thought she had potential. I knew she was going to be somebody.”
She says: “I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, he’s really cute.’ We were in class together that entire year but I hadn’t noticed him until that day.’”
On our wedding day:
He says: “The lights flickered just as the reception was ending and everyone started packing up thinking it was time to go. Before we got out the door the lights went out.”
She says: “We had to park down the street from our apartment because of the ice and snow. I was still in my wedding dress and he was in his tux and we kept seeing people slide down the hill so we had to park a block away from the apartment complex entrance and walk down the hill.”
My advice for a long happy marriage:
He says: “Keep the joy going. Always make jokes, don’t take it too seriously all the time, and learn to live.”
She says: “Be friends and communicate — not surface communication, but deep communication. And respect your spouse. Also, keep God at the forefront of your relationship.”
Tamika was on the homecoming court her senior year, and Quincy took her to the dance. They went to the prom together too.
After graduation, Quincy stayed in Little Rock for trade school where he learned about heating, air conditioning and electrical work. Tamika went to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.
They broke up for about six months while she was in college.
"I still saw her all the time," he says. "She called it a breakup but I'm not sure what to call it."
Tamika worked in Little Rock, selling Sprint PCS phones from a kiosk in Park Plaza, so she returned home every weekend. She saw Quincy when she was in town. They talked on the phone all the time too.
"She tried to keep me around and she tried to be slick about it," he says. "She put me in the car competition at UAPB just so I would come up there."
Tamika says she knew he was proud of his car.
"So I invited him to display his vehicle in the car show. That's what I'm sticking to," she says, though she adds, "I might have wanted to show him off too."
In December 1999, they were driving down University Avenue in that car, and Quincy asked Tamika what apartment she wanted them to move into after she finished her degree.
"He kept talking about all this moving in with me stuff and I was like, 'I'm not moving in with a man until he marries me, so you can just ...' and I was going on and on and I can only imagine sounding like the teacher from Charlie Brown," she says. "It just got to him and he was like, 'Here!'"
That's when he tossed the ring he had been trying to figure out how to give her across the car and into her lap.
They exchanged their vows on Dec. 16, 2000, at Saint Mark Baptist Church.
It was icy outside, and Tamika worried that the weather was a foreshadowing of their life together.
It wasn't, of course. They laugh every day.
Tamika, executive director of the Social Justice Institute at Philander Smith College, and Quincy, assistant chief of operations at the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, have two children: Abby, 7, and Quincy "Q3," 5.
They were named the couple with "Best Personality" when they were in high school.
"We have been the same people since high school," Tamika says. "We have always been this way."
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High Profile on 11/11/2018