Sweet tooth leads to sweet life.
Dennis Whitbey was done with women and Kelley Geyer couldn’t be bothered with men, but their friends insisted that they give love a chance.
Dennis was a superintendent for the construction company that was remodeling and adding on to the office building where Kelley worked in September 2000. They had passed in the halls, and even exchanged pleasantries at some point, but neither took much notice.
Kelley’s co-workers got her a gift basket for her birthday, though, and Dennis’s sweet tooth took over from there.
“I was trying to talk the ladies she worked with into letting me cut the bottom of the shrink wrap so I could get some candy out of there — and they ratted me out,” Dennis says.
When Kelley found out about his thwarted shenanigans, she was nice enough to take him a couple of pieces of candy.
“That’s how we met, over two pieces of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups,” he says.
Kelley’s co-workers later gave Dennis her number.
“They said I needed to call her and we needed to go out,” he says.
He dragged his feet for a while, not having a great interest in dating anyone, before he reluctantly dialed her number.
“At that point in my life I didn’t have anything going on. I had friends and family and basically, work,” he says. “I wasn’t dating anyone, so I thought, OK, I’ll give her a call.”
Kelley’s lack of enthusiasm matched Dennis’.
“I was at a point in my life where I didn’t think I needed anybody. I had friends and a family and a house and I was making it just fine. I didn’t want to go out with him,” says Kelley, widowed five years earlier. “I had called one of my friends that night and said I don’t want to go on this date because I was just over that. I said, ‘He’s not my type.’ She said, ‘Well, your type hasn’t worked so you need to try this.’”
He picked her up and they went to dinner on their first date.
“When I came home that night after our first date, I said I would marry this man,” she says. “He was just a good, kind man. I just saw that. I went from thinking he was a smart aleck to seeing that he was a gentleman who opened doors for me.”
Kelley’s son, Sam Geyer, was 8 at the time, and she hadn’t introduced any of the men she had dated to him.
“I didn’t believe in bringing people in and out of a child’s life,” Kelley says. “But after the first date I knew Dennis was the one and within a week of us going out I let him meet Sam because I knew he was the one.”
Dennis couldn’t stop thinking about Kelley but he was reticent about getting into a relationship.
“I went to my friends and I was trying to get out of it,” Dennis says. “I said I had met this girl and I didn’t understand why I couldn’t get her off my mind. My friend said that love does strange things to people. I said, ‘But this just can’t be happening.’ He said, ‘Oh yeah, it’s happening.’”
Their subsequent dates were fairly sedate — having dinner and going out with friends, mostly.
“We just hung out. I know this sounds cliche and corny — everything just kind of meshed,” Kelley says. “It was just a comfort. Quiet times weren’t uncomfortable times, they were contented times. Everything just clicked from Day One. We just hang out well together. We make good friends and good companions.”
Within a week and a half of Sam meeting Dennis, he proposed — Sam, that is.
“His question was, ‘When are you going to marry my mom?’” Kelley says. “We just looked at each other like, ‘OK, when are we going to do this?’”
Dennis had a jeweler friend design a ring for Kelley, and when he went to her mother’s house for dinner he placed that ring on Kelley’s plate when she wasn’t looking.
They exchanged their vows on Jan 13, 2001, just three months after their first date, in Salem United Methodist Church in Benton. Dennis was 41 when they married; Kelley was 36.
Sam lives in Fayetteville, and Dennis’s daughter, Jeris Henson, lives in Morrilton. He also has two grandchildren.
Dennis and Kelley live in Benton. She works for Landers Auto in Benton and Dennis works for the Arkansas Enterprise for the Developmentally Disabled. Not an official part of his job but something he enjoys each year is becoming Santa Claus for the children at AEDD.
Kelley is — unofficially — his Mrs. Claus, although she doesn’t dress the part.
“He hasn’t got a shy bone in his body. He offsets me. I tend
to be the one who sits back and watches. We are opposites,” she says. “I thought he was a sassy smart aleck. I was at a point in my life where I didn’t think I needed anybody. I wasn’t looking for anybody when we met. It just happened at the right time, apparently.”
If you have an interesting howwe-met story or know someone who does, please call (501) 4257228 or email