Greg Adams was unlike anyone Sydney Gibson had met before -- and she appreciated his individuality.
Greg grew up in Park Hills, Mo., and didn't know a soul at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, when he started his freshman year there in 1981. He soon met a guy from Little Rock in his English class, though, and they became best friends.
The first time I saw my future spouse:
She says: “I knew he was different from everybody else and he was super friendly and warm and funny.”
He says: “We took a long walk around campus and just talked and she told me about her boyfriend. I thought, ‘This is a really cool person.’”
On our wedding day:
She says: “We put a lot of effort into the service and I just wanted to focus on that instead of getting distracted by whether everything looked perfect. I knew I was marrying my best friend.”
He says: “As the music was playing, and you know, guests were coming in, I sat up in the balcony there at the church and just watched people come in. I thought all these people are here, these are some of my favorite people, all here together. And I’m getting married today. It was just such a happy feeling.”
My advice for a long happy marriage:
She says: “Marry your best friend.”
He says: “Keep working at it. Make space for the other person to grow and work at ways you can continue to grow together.”
The following year, a bunch of people from his friend's hometown church, Pulaski Heights Baptist, joined him at Baylor and Greg became friends with them, too.
Sydney Gibson was in that group. She first heard about Greg from his best friend's brother, who had just arrived on campus with her.
"He said, 'He's just different [from] anybody I've ever met,'" she says.
As they were talking, he spotted Greg in the distance.
"He said, 'Just look, see what I mean?' At Baylor in the early '80s, it was a very preppy time. It was penny loafers and khaki pants and French-cut Izod sport shirts and just very upper-crust kind of dressing," Sydney says. "Greg was wearing overalls and an embroidered shirt and Chuck Taylor tennis shoes. He did not fit the mold, and that made him pretty interesting."
Sydney had dated the guy who told her about Greg a few times, and because of that Greg was reluctant to ask Sydney for a date.
"But he encouraged me to go ahead and ask her when I was looking for a suggestion about who to take to a drama production," Greg says.
Greg and Sydney were close friends by then.
"The first time I met her, she told me all about her boyfriend," he laughs.
She had dated that boy during high school and was forlorn about leaving him in Little Rock when she left for college. They broke up after her freshman year, and by then Greg had realized that he looked forward to running into Sydney in the cafeteria at lunchtime instead of the girl he was dating, so that relationship ended as well.
It was the spring of his junior year -- Sydney's sophomore year -- when they went on their first date, dinner at a Greek restaurant and a college theater production of The Merchant of Venice.
"That was on April 12, 1984. We rode on my Yamaha 250 motorcycle," Greg says. "I forgot to tip the waiter, and I had to go back the next day to tip the waiter."
In the fall, they went to see Fiddler on the Roof.
In between, their relationship wasn't clearly defined, but they knew without question that they enjoyed each other's company.
"Baylor has these huge live oak trees that have swings suspended from them all over campus. We would meet at the swings, and we would just sit and visit," Sydney says.
They didn't need fanfare or formality to be together.
"Then we decided we needed to talk about our relationship -- that was in 1984 and it was election night," Greg says. "I was making a cake for a potluck supper the next day, and she came over to the apartment and then all our hopes and dreams in politics got dashed because Reagan was re-elected in a landslide. But we decided that we were going to try this dating thing out, and then it was what we call the 'Big Shift'-- it was a manual transmission model of relationships, and so we went from neutral to first gear."
Greg graduated from Baylor the following spring and went home to Missouri for some summer classes before starting a master's program at the University of Missouri at Columbia. He didn't have a phone for a few weeks, so they kept in touch through letters. And when his classes ended, he went to Little Rock and worked briefly for her father, doing manual labor at some rental properties, and then took Sydney back to Baylor for her senior year.
In November, on the anniversary of the "Big Shift" in their relationship, he handed her a note written in calligraphy.
"It said, 'Sydney Elizabeth and John Gregory went from fourth gear to fifth gear, overdrive, otherwise known as engagement to be married,'" Greg says.
They were married on Aug. 22, 1986, at Pulaski Heights Baptist Church in Little Rock.
They flew to Minneapolis for their honeymoon and rented a car to drive from there to Bakersfield, Wis., on the banks of Lake Superior, and then drove back to Minnesota to catch a plane back home.
Sydney had one last semester left at Baylor, and shortly after she graduated she and Greg moved to Little Rock.
Greg is the program coordinator for the Center for Good Mourning at Arkansas Children's Hospital. Sydney is a special education consultant with Easterseals Arkansas.
They have two children -- Lora Adams of College Park, Md., and Noah Adams of Little Rock.
They celebrate their relationship not just on their wedding anniversary, but throughout the year.
"Our celebrations are fairly modest," Greg says. "But we try to do something around Nov. 6 because that's where it all started."
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
High Profile on 09/15/2019