Ashley Richardson was not game for meeting Cody Ruffin at first, but she had a new job and a customer determined to set them up.
"His mom introduced us," she says.
Ashley was home from college in 2009 and she was working at a clothing store in Little Rock.
"One of her best friends owned the store and she came in after I had started working there," Ashley says of her now-mother-in-law. "She was like, 'You're cute. Do you have a boyfriend?' I just kind of laughed it off."
Cody's mom did not give up.
"She came back in a week later and we got to talking again, and I told her I just adopted a dog. She said, 'Oh, my son just rescued a puppy,' and she pulled out a picture of him with his puppy," Ashley says.
Ashley oohed and aahed over the puppy, but her focus was on Cody.
"I thought, 'I can work with that,'" she says with a laugh.
Cody's mom gave him Ashley's phone number. She had tried to set him up before but usually let things drop when he did not take the bait. She was persistent in this case, though, and when he finally called Ashley they had a long conversation. But it would be a while before they talked again.
"Not that we weren't interested in each other," says Ashley, "we just weren't in that space."
Cody's mother prodded him to invite Ashley to join them for one of his softball games.
"So we went, and I had no clue who he was because I had never seen him in person," she says. "I met his dad, and his dad was like, 'He's the one out there that doesn't match.' He was wearing all these crazy colors. I was more particular back in the day. ..."
"And I was never dressed to impress," Cody finishes.
Cody introduced himself between innings.
"I remember walking back and thinking, 'Oh man, she's hot.' I had never even seen a picture of her," he says.
When the game was over, his mom suggested Ashley and Cody go do something together.
"His mom and I knew each other pretty well by then. She was super fun and sweet and just easy to get along with. She likes a lot of the same stuff that I like -- we're still really close," Ashley says. "But then she said, 'OK. I'm leaving.' I'm like, 'I don't even know. What am I supposed to do now?' We went to Taco Bell."
Cody briefly chatted with a friend on the phone and then shoved a burrito in his mouth -- Ashley was smitten.
"Most females would have been like, 'What the heck?' I found it super comical," she says. "He wasn't trying to be rude at all, he was just super authentic, like he wasn't trying to impress me, he wasn't trying to say all the right things, he was just who he was, in the moment. After that day, we were pretty inseparable."
Ashley had moved home for a year, but she still had a couple of classes to finish and was back at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville in July 2010.
She and Cody had looked at rings while he was visiting, and he bought the one she liked without her knowing. He made plans for them to go to her favorite restaurant the following weekend when he was back in Fayetteville.
"I had a limo, and we got ready, and we were fixing to walk out the door, and I said, 'Hold on. We can't go outside like this. First, you have to be my fiancé,' and I got down on my knee and proposed," he says.
Ashley was surprised.
"It was just really sweet because we were able to soak in that evening, just us, and our limo driver was the sweetest guy. He drove us around Fayetteville and did a mini-photo shoot at all of my favorite places," she says.
They were married on Jan. 15, 2011, at First Presbyterian Church in Little Rock.
"The first five years of our marriage were really, really hard," she says. "We met and were head over heels and we got married and then we just hit a brick wall and really struggled."
Cody says -- and Ashley agrees -- that if they had not gotten married when they did, they likely would not have stayed together.
"But the good Lord had other plans and we ended up doing a vow renewal for our 10-year anniversary and just kind of created this simplistic wedding that was just about Cody and me," she says. "I feel like our wedding, I was being that young bride trying to have the best of the best and I was more worried about everything going on than I was about Cody and me."
For their vow renewal at Bella Terra in Cabot, they were surrounded by friends and family and by their children -- Eason, 8, Leila, 6 and Davis, 5.
"We were blessed to get the opportunity to kind of redo it for our 10-year anniversary," she says. "It was literally the best day of my life."
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NoneThe first time I saw my future spouse:
She says: "I thought, 'He's so fine.' I have always had a preference for guys with dark hair and blue eyes and he has dark hair and these crystal blue eyes. I was literally captivated."
He says: "I thought she was hot."
On our wedding day:
She says: "My dress broke right before I was going in. Thankfully, my seamstress was a friend of the family and she was at the wedding and she had to sew me into my dress."
He says: "I was nervously excited about walking down the aisle and about to pass out."
My advice for a long happy marriage:
She says: "It sounds so foreign in this day and age, but be selfless and serve your spouse. Put them in front of yourself. When things start going wrong, work on yourself instead of blaming the other person."
He says: "Be honest, even with the little things, even if you think what you've done is going to make someone mad. And respect."
Ashley Richardson and Cody Ruffin were married on Jan. 15, 2011. They were introduced by Cody’s mother. “She had tried to set me up with people before but most of the time I didn’t even blink and just kept going about my own business. This was the only time it was successful,” he says. (Special to the Democrat-Gazette)