RIGHT TIME RIGHT PLACE

She bumped into him and started a life together

Kerri Jackson and Charlie Case around the time of their wedding in 1996
Kerri Jackson and Charlie Case around the time of their wedding in 1996

Coordination was not Kerri Jackson's strongest suit, but Charlie Case showed her some grace after she spilled her orange juice on him at church.

Kerri was 18 and had just graduated from high school in Russellville during the summer of 1994, and Charlie was home between finishing his undergraduate degree and starting a master's program. Kerri went to church with her father, and Charlie was there with his family.

Kerri was prepared to enjoy some of the breakfast goodies that had been left out for congregants ... until she tripped, sloshing sticky orange liquid onto Charlie.

"Graceful is not a word that is typically associated with me," she jokes.

Charlie handled the spill in stride. He had noticed Kerri before the spillage.

"She was wearing a very short skirt," he explains.

He laughed and they introduced themselves and started talking. It wasn't long before he asked her for a date.

"We were supposed to go out and he stood me up," she says.

Kerri tried calling Charlie to see what was up but got no answer, so she went to a friend's house to spend the night.

The next morning, she says, her sister called in a tizzy, demanding to know where she had been.

"Just to be clear, this was not unusual for me to go spend the night at this friend's house, but it was like there was this All Points Bulletin out," she says.

Charlie, it turns out, was trying to track her down to explain his absence the night before. His father had had a mild heart attack -- he was OK, but Charlie had been at the hospital with him when he was supposed to pick Kerri up for their date.

"I did decide to go ahead and go out with him," she says.

They had dinner at a Mexican restaurant and saw an action movie. She initially declined his offer of something from the concession stand, still full from dinner. But during the course of conversation, he learned that she had never tasted Milk Duds.

"He bought me Milk Duds at the concession stand, which I thought was very classy of him," she says. "My affection can be bought with chocolate and caramel."

Both were headed for the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville that August, shortly after their first date. Kerri was starting her freshman year and Charlie was pursuing his master's in business administration. He had completed a bachelor's degree in engineering there already, so he was familiar with the town and he was happy to show her around town.

"I was very happy to be shown around town," she says. "We just kept dating when we were in Fayetteville."

When he finished the MBA program two years later, he was hired by a company in Tulsa.

"We were talking about how he had taken the job in Tulsa and we were talking about him moving, and we kept sort of talking in circles, and finally, I said, 'I don't understand what we're talking about. Are we talking about breaking up? Or are we talking about getting married? Because those are two different conversations,'" she says. "He said, 'Well, I thought we'd get married.' And I said, 'OK. Let's do that.'"

Charlie gave Kerri a ring, and they started planning a wedding.

"It didn't take me but a few weeks to realize that I didn't want to plan a wedding," she says. "So, I finished finals and we eloped."

They were married at a bed and breakfast in Eureka Springs on Dec. 20, 1996.

Kerri moved with Charlie to Tulsa and enrolled at Northeastern State University about an hour away in Tahlequah. When she graduated they moved to Chicago so she could get her master's degree from Northwestern University.

"That was important to me," she says.

In 2000 Charlie was offered a job in Little Rock. Though they thought it would be a temporary stop it's the place they still call home, 21 years later.

"Bob Steel, for whatever reason, decided I would be a good reporter," says Kerri, who started her career as a reporter for KATV. "You get a community. You get friends and you get a church and you get a school and you don't want to go. We're quite happy here, but I do like to joke about this being part of my five-year plan."

Kerri is the public relations director for Kinetic at Windstream.

Charlie was a telecommunications engineer for 23 years but is in the midst of a career change. He is a third-year law student at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law.

Charlie and Kerri have a son, Jackson, 15.

Each day, they do what they can to embrace their differences, turning them into common ground.

"Every personality test we've ever had says we're complete opposites. She's the person who pushes things to the next step for us. That's pretty much always been the case," he says. "She's the one who drives the agenda."

Both find humor in the fact that Kerri's klutzy characteristic -- the one that brought them together -- remains intact.

But, Charlie quips, "She hasn't spilled anything on me lately."

If you have an interesting how-we-met story or if you know someone who does, please call (501) 425-7228 or email:

kdishongh@adgnewsroom.com

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