Kyle Bridges set a matrimonial chain reaction in motion when he invited a woman to a party in 2009.
"It's a roundabout story about how this all came together," he cautions.
The first time I saw my future spouse:
She says: “I thought Kyle was just really cute and I could tell from the first conversation that he was just really easy to talk to. I was just keeping an open mind and hoping something might happen.”
He says: “I thought she was really beautiful and I was hoping I wouldn’t screw it up.”
On our wedding day:
She says: “We were in the Capital Hotel and our photographer had planned it so we were right there on a stairwell for our ‘first look,’ just kind of having a few minutes to get to see each other and take a deep breath and try to relax a little bit and enjoy. That was a very special memory.
He says: “Brooke looked absolutely stunning. When we had that ‘first look,’ I realized that this was really going to happen. Also, one of my friends was a priest and he gave a nice homily. As we were walking out after we were married, we heard my buddies doing the Hog call.”
My advice for a long happy marriage:
She says: “Communication and honesty are key.”
He says: “I would say, ‘Happy wife, happy life.’ And remember that you’re in this together. You both want the same thing, the same outcome, so try to work together.”
That woman brought another woman, who fell in love with Kyle's roommate -- and introduced Kyle to Brooke Ivy. Kyle and Brooke would later play matchmaker for another couple.
Kyle was with friends in a store preparing for a Halloween party in 2009 when he saw a woman he had met on a mission trip back in college and invited her to the party. She came -- and she brought a friend, Lara, who met Kyle's roommate, Alan, that night.
Alan and Kyle, friends since first grade, had been roommates since 2004, shortly after Kyle moved back to Little Rock upon finishing his bachelor's and master's degrees in civil engineering at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. In September 2011, five weeks before Alan and Lara were to marry, they set Kyle up on a blind date with Lara's friend, Brooke.
Kyle and Brooke both grew up in Little Rock and had mutual friends, but their paths didn't cross until Lara and Alan stepped in.
Brooke was game for a blind date, but she did Google Kyle beforehand, checking out his photo on a professional site before they met.
"I thought we were going into it completely blind because that would help my chances," Kyle jokes.
Their first date was dinner at Big Orange in the Promenade at Chenal in Little Rock. After they ate, they strolled around the promenade.
"He made fun of my terrible sense of direction, which he quickly realized as we were walking around and talking about where the car was parked and I was going in the complete opposite direction," Brooke says. "That was funny. He kind of played along for a minute, and then he said, 'Well, we're over here.'"
Another of their earlier dates was to see WWE's Monday Night Raw.
"You'll do anything when you're dating someone, right?" Kyle quips. "She was actually game for it. She went with me and one of my buddies, and as far as I know she enjoyed it."
It's a source of humor between them now.
"He sometimes asks me if I would go to WWE with him now," she says. "I tell him absolutely not. But it was definitely a cultural experience. I don't know. Maybe I would go back."
Kyle knew there was strong potential for them when Brooke showed up at his place to watch a Cardinals game.
"It was 2011 when the Cardinals ended up making their post-season run," Kyle says. "We ended up winning the World Series. This is when I knew Brooke was the one. She came over wearing a red shirt. She brought dinner, and she actually watched the game with me."
Not only did his Cardinals end up doing well the year he and Brooke met, so did his other two favorite sports teams, the San Francisco 49ers and the Arkansas Razorbacks.
"He took that as a sign," Brooke says.
Brooke, her niece, her sister and their mother took a girl's trip to Memphis on June 23, 2013.
"My mom loved Elvis, so we did the whole Graceland thing. We were staying at the Peabody, so that next morning, on my mom's birthday, we went to the rooftop of the Peabody," Brooke says.
Kyle surprised her by being there, along with his parents, and there were flowers and champagne. He had asked Brooke's mother for Brooke's hand in marriage a couple of weeks earlier, and she and Brooke's sister had also been in on the plan.
"He proposed right there on the rooftop," Brooke says. "It was very romantic and it was very special."
They exchanged their vows on Sept. 20, 2014 -- the anniversary of their first date -- in the Cathedral of St. Andrew in Little Rock.
The priest who presided over their wedding was a friend of Kyle's. A friend of Brooke's took the newlyweds for a ride in his antique Bentley, and after their reception in the Junior League building, they took a carriage ride through the River Market District.
Brooke admits she's not a huge sports fan and that she doesn't watch all the games with Kyle these days.
"But I do like the Cardinals. I married into a big Cardinals family," says Brooke, whose late father was a Cardinals fan, too. "We go to St. Louis every year to watch the Cardinals, and now we bring our daughter. Grace is 4."
Brooke is the development director for the Arkansas Imagination Library and grants officer for Terrapin Consulting, L.L.C. Kyle is a structural engineer with Bernhard TME.
They are grateful to their friends who thought they would be a cute couple.
"Since we have benefited from friends matching us up, we were happy to play matchmaker, too," Brooke says.
Brooke and Kyle introduced their friends Jennifer and Allen Wear, who married a couple of years after they did.
"We were kind of in the middle of this matchmaking thing," Brooke says, "so we wanted to pay it forward."
If you have an interesting how-we-met story or if you know someone who does, please call (501) 425-7228 or email:
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High Profile on 10/20/2019