She was going to be trouble — and he liked that
LeeAnne Leshe and Brady Pipkin were kindergartners in Stamps when they first met in 1988.
“We didn’t like each other,” LeeAnne says. “We really didn’t care for each other.”
They were in the same kindergarten class and LeeAnne remembers sitting on a play mat with Brady.
“I asked him for whatever toy he had and he just looked at me and said, ‘No,’” she says. “He would not share his toys.”
Brady recalls thinking LeeAnne seemed dangerous.
“She talked a lot and I was always afraid she would get me in trouble,” Brady says. “She was always getting in trouble for talking.”
They both grew and matured, and in high school they played together in band, often in a small group of band members that was chosen to travel to competitions. They ran in the same circle in their small school, and as Halloween approached in 1999 a group of their friends made plans to go to a haunted house in Magnolia.
As the day wore on — and the predicted chance of rain increased — people started dropping out, one by one, until only LeeAnne and Brady were left.
“We ended up going to the haunted house alone, in his truck,” LeeAnne says.
The haunted house was, of course, scary, and going through it served as a sort of surreal bonding experience for LeeAnne and Brady, who by then were already good friends.
“I remember halfway through the haunted house someone stopped me and said, ‘Hey LeeAnne,’” she says. “They were fully dressed as a monster and I didn’t know who it was but, you know, everybody down there kind of knows everybody else.”
Brady handled it all with grace.
“I remember Brady holding my hand through the haunted house,” she says. “I remember us driving back through Magnolia and heading home after the haunted house and we had the radio on and we were just talking about the things kids talk about — music and things like that. We just talked really naturally together. We had a really good time that night. It was a good night.”
Brady asked LeeAnne that night if she would like to date him.
“I told him I would have to think about it,” she says.
Brady wasn’t sure what to make of that.
“We knew each other for 10 years and she needed another two weeks to figure that out,” he says with a laugh.
As the days ticked along, they saw each other at school — and in band — and LeeAnne kept mum about the possibility of a date.
“I thought she was ignoring it or she forgot about it or something,” he says.
LeeAnne wasn’t sure how to bring it up at that point. She had told her best friend that she was thinking about going out with Brady, though, and her friend brought it up for her, which gave her the opening she needed to say she would go out with him.
Their first date was to a football game at Southern Arkansas University at Magnolia, two or three weeks after they had gone to the haunted house.
They dated for the next three years: bowling, watching movies in Texarkana, going to SAU football games and for most of that time, traveling with the school band.
Both got scholarships to SAU and started classes there the fall after high school graduation.
In 2002, Brady had a business pressure-washing 18-wheelers. He had worked hard one summer day, cleaning truck trailers in a field, and he was exhausted when he and LeeAnne went out that evening.
They had looked at rings and talked about marriage and he chose that night to propose. But as he knelt on one knee a crushing cramp seized his leg and he almost fell over.
“He said, ‘Nevermind, just forget it,’” she says. “I said, ‘Wait, no!’ He had the ring out and everything.”
She waited patiently for him to try again, and he did — on her birthday, July 30, 2002.
They were married May 17, 2003, in First Baptist Church in Stamps, the church in which LeeAnne was raised.
“It was a simple wedding, but it was very sweet,” she says.
They honeymooned at Disney World in Orlando, Fla., and then returned to Stamps and SAU.
“It was our first trip as adults and we loved it,” she says.
LeeAnne and Brady moved to Little Rock in 2005 when she was accepted to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences College of Pharmacy. They live in Maumelle now. LeeAnne is a pharmacist with the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System. Brady is an accountant at CalArk.
They have a 2-year-old daughter, Sadie.
Brady says that by the time he and LeeAnne started dating in high school, she had figured out how to behave in school. He wasn’t worried about her getting him in trouble anymore.
“She had stayed out of
trouble a little bit,” he says.
But LeeAnne concedes that some things never change.
“I think I’m still more likely to get in trouble than he is,” she says. “He’s pretty reserved and quiet.”
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