Bracy Cross was looking for an opportunity to see Terri Fowler again after meeting her at a party. His blessing came in the form of an overflowed toilet.
Bracy, then a student at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, went with a friend to the friend's girlfriend's birthday party while he was in Little Rock for Christmas break in January 2005.
Terri was the girlfriend's roommate.
"She greeted us at the door and she had the biggest, brightest, toothy smile on her face and big bright red lips and she was the most welcoming, friendly face I think I had ever seen," says Bracy, who quickly turned bashful. "I think I went and hid in the corner for most of the party."
Terri thought he was cute and made a point of checking on him off and on throughout the evening, though she was distracted by the other guests and by a cake she was busy making.
Bracy spent the next day trying to come up with ideas that might take him back into her presence. Fortunately, his friend's girlfriend called, distraught over a plumbing problem that happened at her house and Bracy was offered as a solution.
"He said, 'Call Bracy, he can fix anything. He'll come over and help,'" Terri says.
Terri was ecstatic to hear that Bracy was on his way -- but she had lunch plans with her family that day.
"I called a friend and I said, 'I met this boy last night, really sweet and kind. His name is Bracy and he's really cute, and he's at my house fixing the toilet and I had to leave,'" she says.
Bracy was gone by the time she made it home, but he, her roommate and her roommate's boyfriend had made plans for them to all go to a movie that night.
"I didn't sit next to him because I was too nervous," Terri says.
Terri and her roommate invited Bracy and some other friends over the next night to hang out, which gave them a chance to get to know each other before he left for Fayetteville the next day.
"I was kind of disappointed he didn't ask me for my number or anything," she says.
Bracy had more plans in the works.
"I had been talking to my friend, saying 'We need to get a trip together,'" he says.
Gold Strike Casino in Tunica, Miss., was set as a meeting spot for several groups of their friends. Terri had planned to stay with a friend in Oxford, Miss., and ride back home with a friend.
"It somehow ended up just us again, kind of just hanging out and walking around," Terri says. "We ended up -- we laugh about this -- at the nickel slots and The Price Is Right."
It was Bracy who took her home the next day.
"I gave a ride to a lot of people," he says, "but she was the last drop-off."
They talked on the phone daily while he was away at school after that, and they saw each other every weekend.
Bracy spent the summer in Little Rock, taking classes online while Terri, on break from her full-time teaching job in the Little Rock School District, worked part time for Central Arkansas Library System.
He invested in a fixer-upper boat, dubbed "Naughti-cool," and fixed it up. They took it out almost every weekend.
"Her sister had a place in Hot Springs and we went and camped on Lake DeGray, we went to the Buffalo, the White River ... we just dragged that boat everywhere," Bracy says.
In December 2007, as Bracy finished up his engineering degree at UA, he planned a trip for them to New York. Terri had told him she wanted to see New York all decked out for the holidays.
"I took her up to the top of Rockefeller Center," Bracy says.
He worried about the engagement ring that was tucked in his pocket setting off the metal detector alarms and spoiling his surprise proposal, but he managed to pull it off.
"I had her go through first and I was winking and hoping for the best," he says.
They were married on June 7, 2008, on Petit Jean Mountain in a ceremony co-officiated by Terri's childhood pastor and Bracy's grandfather. A brass quartet including Bracy's father provided music. Artwork by one of the children in Terri's first grade class decorated the wedding program. Their reception was in the boathouse at the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute.
The Crosses have two daughters, Lila, 10, and June, 7.
Terri's roommate had invited her to a New Year's Eve party in 2004, just days before the birthday party where they met, intending to set her up with Bracy then. Terri declined that invitation, but things seem to have worked out just as they were supposed to a few days later.
"I would have met him then but it ended up happening more naturally," she says.
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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The first time I saw my future spouse:
She says: “I felt instantly comfortable and happy.”
He says: “She had a beautiful smile, a very warm, welcoming greeting smile.”
On our wedding day:
She says: “That night when we left, he said, ‘That was the best wedding I’ve ever been to, and it was mine.’ It was just fun. It really was.”
He says: “It was just a great celebration.”
My advice for a long happy marriage:
She says: “Make marriage your priority.”
He says: “Keep working on it.”