Dottie Coker moved from a small town to the big city and back again, and she discovered a broader world than she could have imagined on the gym floor of her tiny high school.
Howard Hughes insists he saw her first.
"I don't know about that," she says. "I saw him right away."
Dottie's family was from Delight but moved away when she was in the fifth grade so her father could find better work opportunities as an electrician. They lived in several smaller towns before ending up in Chicago, where the number of students alone felt overwhelming to her.
"Chicago is huge and that was the largest school I had ever been to in my life," she says. "I was just scared to go there."
She begged her father to let her move in with an aunt in Delight and go to high school there, and her father relented. She was 15 in 1956 when she went to live with her grandmother and an aunt who was just six years older than she.
"I was always at the ball games, because in a small school you were just always at the ball games," she says. "After I saw Howard play ball I told my uncle that I wanted to meet Howard. They were just six days apart in age and they had gone to school together their whole lives, so he introduced me, and then I became Howard's girlfriend."
Howard, two years older than Dottie, played sports every season, and she was in the stands cheering him on at every game. They occasionally made the trek to Arkadelphia to a drive-in movie.
"That was a world away -- 28 miles," Howard says. "We didn't even have a car when we got married, so we didn't do that very often."
Their first real date, though, included such a trip.
"He took me to see Elvis Presley's 'Love Me Tender,'" Dottie says.
Dottie's family had decided she would return to Chicago at the end of the school year.
"I guess I was getting to be a lot for my aunt to handle," she says. "But I didn't want to go back to Chicago."
The night after he graduated from high school, Howard proposed.
"I didn't give her an engagement ring or anything," he says. "I just asked her. And of course she said yes."
They were married on May 17, 1957, in Howard's mother's home in Delight.
"I only had $8," Howard says. "We didn't splurge. I might have even borrowed a jacket -- I can't remember. But I did have a tie on."
Dottie was 16 years and one day old. Her father signed for her to marry Howard, who he thought was a good kid.
"I think Howard won Daddy over quickly," Dottie says. "He knew everybody we knew and I don't think Daddy really wanted me to live in Chicago, or maybe get married in Chicago one day."
They borrowed his mother's car for a short honeymoon in Hope.
"I didn't have enough money to put enough gas in the car to go farther than that," he says.
Since then, though, they have traveled extensively, with trips to Puerto Rico, Canada, China, Russia, Japan and several European countries as well.
"We've taken trips to Hawaii and been on a cruise through the Baltics and Norway and Sweden and Denmark and Finland and Estonia," Howard says. "I said early on that we were going to do this while we were young enough to enjoy it, even if we had to pay for it later."
Howard had gotten a job at a hardwood flooring mill right out of high school.
"I did anything and everything I could make a buck at," he says. "We didn't even have a car. I walked out to the highway to catch a ride and go to work."
Dottie stayed behind in Delight for a few months after he left to look for a better work opportunity in Little Rock, and then they found an apartment and she joined him. She worked as a babysitter and he started an electrician training program.
"I'd already given up a chance playing professional baseball by getting married, so I thought, there has to be more to life than this -- day in and day out coming home, going to bed, getting up and going to work. So I came in one Friday afternoon and told Dottie I was going to college."
They sold most of their belongings two weeks later and he enrolled in classes at Arkansas State Teachers College -- now the University of Central Arkansas -- in Conway.
Dottie got a job at Timex to support them while he studied, and when he graduated she took a break to stay home with their two children.
Their daughter, Kim McClain, lives in Conway; their son, Mitchell, lives in Fort Smith.
The Hughes also have four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Dottie went on to work for more than 20 years as director of volunteers at St. Edward Mercy Hospital in Fort Smith.
Howard started an electrical contracting business in Fort Smith and after he retired in 2006 he and Dottie moved to Maumelle.
"We've been very fortunate to have been able to live a full life," he says.
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The first time I saw my future spouse:
She says: “He was the most handsome guy on the floor and I wanted to meet him.”
He says: “She was the prettiest girl I had ever seen.”
On our wedding day:
She says: “I was sad that my mother and daddy could not come to my wedding. They were in Chicago. I was very nervous — kind of scared — and I felt like a new person in a new town all of a sudden.”
He says: “I think I was numb. I didn’t know what to think really because I hadn’t had a lot of time to think. I was just going along for the ride.”
Our advice for a long, happy marriage:
She says: “You have to be fair and discuss and communicate.”
He says: “Be a good listener.”
Howard Hughes and Dottie Coker were married on May 17, 1957. Dottie thought their wedding was perfect. “We had a sweet, precious little wedding, with both of us dressed the best we could be,” she says. (Special to the Democrat-Gazette)