Grace Pickle was the new girl in eighth grade. Josh Jones won her over with a firm handshake.
Grace and her family moved to Little Rock from Houston in 2005, and Josh introduced himself shortly after she started at Pulaski Academy.
"He had a lot of gel in his hair and it was all spiky," she says. "I thought he was handsome and he was so nice. I immediately had a crush on him."
Josh noted Grace's locker was decorated with Bible verses. He was not interested in long-term romance at that young age, but he understood on some mature level that this was important.
"My mom and I got on the conversation of marriage or something like that and I remember saying to her if there was anyone I would marry it would probably be Grace Pickle," he says. "I remember saying that because I was just thinking of her values."
In those early years, Josh was busy with sports, Boy Scouts, and Grace was occupied with friends, volleyball and track.
"We would always stop in the hallways and talk to each other," Grace says.
They were usually in the same small group of classmates that gathered for pictures and dinner before school dances.
"That meant talking a lot with her parents, mainly her dad," Josh says.
In February 2010, just months before they would graduate, a winter storm hit Little Rock.
Josh spent the day sledding with a friend, and that evening Grace invited him over.
"I said, 'Josh, we've got some really good mountains out here in west Little Rock. You need to bring your sled,'" she says. "There was no romantic thought to it, we were just such good friends."
Josh made his way to her house, off Arkansas 10, and they sledded until about 10 p.m. that night.
"That night, we kind of looked at each other and said, 'Why have we never dated?' It was just such a safe friendship, it had never crossed our minds. All of a sudden it was like a spark out of nowhere," she says. "We were walking back to my house and he said, 'Well, Grace, I don't want anything serious.'"
Josh recalls saying that.
"Then that feeling of momentum is carrying you. You're, I guess, falling in love," he says, "Maybe that's why they call it that, where you realize you're falling and you know there's nothing you can do to stop your fall, and now you're kind of just bracing for the impact. That's kind of what it was."
Their first official date was dinner at Loca Luna, followed by a long walk in the cold.
Josh says it came without the typical first-date awkwardness.
"I've had girlfriends where you do certain things and you buy gifts or you take someone on a date and it's really kind of for the purpose of maybe impressing someone or to hope they'll like you," he says. "I never really had that experience with Grace. It was just always we enjoyed talking and being together."
After graduation a few months later, Grace left for the University of Mississippi at Oxford and Josh went to Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
"Even though we were going to go our separate ways in college it was just so crazy that without even really saying it we just knew that it was going to be OK," she says.
They immersed themselves in studying and worked hard to stay close across the miles.
Josh proposed to Grace at Flatside Pinnacle at sunset, after dinner at Senor Tequila -- the site of their first kiss. He gave her a wooden cross he made with what would be her new married name on the back before he gave her an engagement ring.
They planned the wedding from afar, as Grace completed her bachelor's degree and started pharmacy school. Josh finished engineering school, got a job and worked toward getting a private pilot's license.
They were married on June 13, 2015, at St. James United Methodist Church in Little Rock.
The newlyweds lived in Oxford for two years while Grace finished pharmacy school.
"It was the perfect two years to grow in our marriage and each other," she says. "But Little Rock was calling us home."
They returned to Little Rock in 2017. Josh works for Cromwell Architect Engineers; Grace is a clinical pharmacy specialist in hepatology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. They are raising two children, Elizabeth, 4, and Elijah, 1.
Their second child, Daniel, was stillborn in 2022.
Their faith, they say, is carrying them through that loss.
"I'm not going to deny that was, and still is, an impossible burden that we can't recognize that we're looking at, but God gets us through it," Josh says.
Grace says Josh's faith is one of the first things that drew her to him.
"I'm just grateful for him and how he makes me better," she says. "I'm so grateful that the Lord just kind of placed him in my life at the perfect time, and we got to kind of watch each other grow and mature. That was really cool."
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The first time I saw my future spouse:
She says: "I felt mesmerized."
He says: "She had the love of Christ in her. It's one of those moments when an eighth-grade boy might slip into a somewhat mature thought, and I thought she would be a good mom."
On our wedding day:
She says: "That was the best day of my life. I would love to relive it."
He says: "At the end, they say, 'Kiss the bride,' and they're supposed to say, 'Let's all congratulate Mr. and Mrs. Joshua Jones.' But instead of waiting to be announced, I kissed her and grabbed her hand and we just walked out together."
My advice for a long happy marriage:
She says: "Ensure your foundation in Christ, followed closely by a friendship with your spouse and learning your spouse every day — be a student of your spouse every day."
He says: "As we have grown together we learn what our strengths and weaknesses are. But you love your spouse because you love them, and there's not really anything they have done to deserve that and there's nothing they can do to remove that."
Grace and Josh Jones are raising Elijah, now 1, and Elizabeth, now 4. Their son Daniel was stillborn in 2022. Grace and Josh started dating as seniors at Pulaski Academy in Little Rock. Back then, Josh told her he didn’t want anything serious. “And I said, ‘I don’t think I do either,’” she says. “And here I am, having his babies and just the sweetest marriage ever that I am so grateful for.” (Special to the Democrat-Gazette)