Scotty Parish peeked his head around the kitchen door and spotted 12-year-old Jonna Bradley sitting in his living room in 1962.
"I had a date with a girl at that time, so I didn't pay much attention to her," says Scotty, who was 14 then, "but I should have."
The first time I remember seeing my future spouse:
She says: “I probably noticed his killer blue eyes.”
He says: “I was on my way to a date with the most popular girl in my high school and I was probably more excited about that than having company.”
On our wedding day:
She says: “It was really family and close friends and they were there to support us.”
He says: “I was so nervous that I didn’t kiss her. I didn’t even realize until I heard somebody say, ‘You forgot to kiss her!’”
My advice for a long happy marriage:
She says: “We respect each other’s space. I think it’s very important to have your time apart.”
He says: “That’s one thing we both agree on — we both advise people that’s one of the keys to a long marriage.”
He only spoke to her briefly as he made his way to the front door to leave, but no matter -- the foundation for a relationship between them had been established early on.
Their fathers were both cooks for the Civilian Conservation Corps back in the 1930s and had kept in touch over the years. There's a picture of Scotty in the arms of Jonna's parents before Jonna was born, in fact.
Scotty's family lived in Hayti, Mo., but he had been born in Carlisle because his grandparents lived in Carlisle and his mother wanted to be near her own mother after giving birth.
The Bradleys lived in Newport in the 1940s -- they later moved to Little Rock -- and the Parishes made a point of seeing them often when they visited family in Carlisle. The first memory Scotty and Jonna have of each other is when they were 12 and 14 years old, but they had seen each other periodically throughout their lifetimes.
Jonna was the first person to send Scotty a Valentine. She was just 5 months old when her mother put it in the mail for him, signed "I love you, Scotty Michael." They still have it, along with the senior picture Scotty's mother delivered to him while he was in college at Memphis State University in Tennessee. She told him Jonna sent it to him, but Jonna says she only remembers his mother asking her for one.
"To this very day, I call that the Cupid picture," he says. "We think my mother kind of played matchmaker here. Either way, it worked because I thought she was so pretty."
In 1966, during one of Scotty's family's visits to Arkansas, they went to see Lt. Robin Crusoe, USN at the movie theater together, maybe a ploy to get away from the chattering grownups. It was definitely a date, according to Jonna.
"Nothing came out of that date. It wasn't a long-range plan," Jonna says. "I think he was probably afraid I was going to fall out the door because I was so far away from him in the car. I was just quiet and shy."
In 1968, though, Jonna called Scotty on Sadie Hawkins Day at Hall High School, which offered girls the rare opportunity to call boys, and invited him to a Sadie Hawkins dance.
Jonna isn't sure why she did that, other than there was no one at her high school she wanted to invite.
"He just popped into my head," she says.
After that dance, they saw each other regularly. Every other weekend she rode the bus to Memphis to visit him, or he drove to Little Rock to visit her.
Jonna's mother operated the soda fountain in Freiderica Pharmacy on Markham Street across from University Hospital, now University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
"Jonna would kind of wait tables in there, and so naturally when I came from Memphis I would go there because that's where Jonna would always be. And we would sit down have a burger or something and go out. And then I would the spend the night at her house -- in separate rooms, of course," Scotty says.
Because of his quick trips in and out of town to see Jonna, the pharmacist and other employees at the pharmacy dubbed him "Memphis Flash."
"I said, 'You're the girl I want to marry,'" Scotty says. "I think that's the closest we got to a proposal."
He gave her a ring in spring 1969, while she was studying at State College of Arkansas (now the University of Central Arkansas) in Conway. There was a little ceremony in her dorm to celebrate, with girls singing and her showing off her ring.
They were married on Aug. 24, 1969, in the chapel of Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church in Little Rock, just before Jonna turned 19 and just after Scotty turned 21.
"We were homeless for about three weeks before he went into the service," Jonna says. "We lived between our parents during that time."
Scotty left for basic training at the end of that time, and she joined him eight weeks later in Biloxi, Miss. After that they moved to Eglin Air Force Base in Fort Walton, Fla., and then Hickham Air Force Base in Oahu, Hawaii.
They settled in central Arkansas when he got out of the service, and he got a job in engineering with Allied Telephone Co., later Alltel. He retired after 35 years with that company. Jonna worked as a teacher's aide with Pulaski County Special School District.
The Parishes live in North Little Rock. They have two sons -- John Parish of Conway and Jason Parish of North Little Rock -- as well as three grandchildren.
They will renew their vows on their 50th anniversary.
"It doesn't feel like it's been 50 years," Jonna says. "It feels like we've just blinked and it's here."
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High Profile on 08/18/2019