This archived article first appeared in February 2001

She was 10, he was 11, the day he showed up to help move her family.

She had seen him around before. There was no way she could forget his jaunty smile and sky blue eyes.

"I knew I was in love with him the first time I saw him," she remembers now, 67 years later. "He had a big, beautiful dog, I think it was a German Shepherd, with him the first time I saw him at my sister Rena's home."

They only saw each other a few times after that. He knew some of her family, but didn't really know her. They didn't live close to each other and didn't attend the same Fort Smith elementary schools.

Then one day, when movers came to take her widowed mother's furniture to another house, HE turned up as a helper.

She was shy and stood to one side in the kitchen while he went about his work. She noticed him looking at a ring hanging on a hook by the refrigerator. It was a G-Man ring. The boy next door had given it to her the day before to impress her. It probably was just a prize from a Cracker Jack box, but a G-Man ring was a popular item with kids their age.

"Whose ring is that?" Blue Eyes asked Shy Girl. "Nobody's," she boldly blurted. "You can have it if you want it."

The next day Blue Eyes wore the ring to school. When Boy Next Door heard about it, he demanded his ring back.

But Blue Eyes wasn't about to give up the gift from pretty, brown-eyed Shy Girl.

"We had a little altercation and he lost," the now 78-year-old says calmly. He's sitting across the kitchen table from Shy Girl in their Van Buren home. There's a twinkle in his still beautiful blue eyes. "I got the ring."

A few years later, he got the girl, too. They celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in May.

She says they never really dated. But they often saw each other at weenie roasts, parties, and other gatherings with family and friends. He was the youngest of nine children; she was the baby of eight. After knowing each other for years they were married in the living room of her home when she was 16 and he was 17.

"He was already at my house so much my mother was glad," she laughs. "But his dad said we were too young and threatened to have our marriage annulled. His mom saved us, though. She told his dad if he did that, she'd just take us to Oklahoma and let us get married there. And he knew she meant it."

Since then they've kept their vows of "for better or worse" – enduring many hardships but celebrating many blessings. Growing up during the Depression taught them to be survivors.

Together they have endured wars, tornadoes, cancer, financial hardship, and the births, deaths, trials, and tribulations of their own family and the families of the 20 churches throughout Arkansas he pastored during 43 years as a minister.

They could write a book about the jobs he has had, the places they've lived, and the people they've known. When they first got married he was working at a grocery 72 hours a week for $10. His duties included killing and dressing chickens to be sold in the store.

To earn a little more, he switched to hauling ice to downtown Fort Smith businesses. He had to be at work at 4 a.m. to hitch up a mule team and start his route. At each stop he toted 50-pound blocks up endless flights of stairs.

She laughs now when she remembers having to wash his one and only pair of socks every night, so he'd have clean socks the next day. Except for breakfast, which she made for him at 3 a.m. daily, the only thing she could cook was butter beans. Blue Eyes, who will cheerfully eat most anything, still just shakes his head at the memory of how sick he was of butter beans before she finally learned to make other dishes and become a great cook.

Their first parsonage had no inside plumbing and a coal-burning stove that barely heated one room of the house. Their last parsonage, which they bought after he retired from the ministry in 1990, was destroyed by a tornado. But they built a new house on the same property and live there today.

So what's their secret of staying in love, through thick and thin, for more than 60 years? The Bible is the best manual available for advice on love and marriage, they agree. Never go to bed mad at each other, she says. Keep the vows you promised to keep when you got married, he says. Too many couples now give up too easily on each other, and don't take the vows they made at their wedding seriously.

Always remember why you loved each other in the first place and that "love at first sight" can last, she adds. "I knew the first time I met your dad I'd never love anyone else, and I never have."

Linda Seubold is proud to be the daughter of Blue Eyes and Shy Girl, better known as Roy and Euneva Poynor. Her beloved mother Euneva passed away just after this column was published, in March 2001. Our editor and her husband, Frank, recently celebrated their 40th anniversary. But that's another love story.