Pair’s silent attraction awaited a third-party nudge
When Gigi Chambers left the job where she met Dan Parker, she thought any chance of them getting together was out the window. It turned out that her leaving opened the door for them to be a couple.
Gigi was finishing her master’s degree in communications disorders in 1985, and that entailed a six-week stint in the speech pathology department at what was then Arkansas Rehabilitation Institute (now Baptist Health Rehabilitation). Dan was an administrator at the institute, and his responsibilities included oversight of the organization’s therapy departments.
Gigi remembers a therapist she worked with commenting about Dan visiting their department more often after her arrival than he had before.
“They all laughed and said they thought we would be a cute pair or something like that,” she says.
Dan admits he did make more trips to that department after spotting Gigi.
“I didn’t always get up to speech because they were in separate offices doing their clinical work and a lot of times their doors were closed,” he says. “I knew what time the transition between patients was or what time the lunch hour was and I would slip by there and pay a visit.”
It would not have been appropriate for them to date while they worked together, though, so he did not ask her out.
That fall, Gigi resumed her regular job as a speech pathologist at Seventh Street Elementary in North Little Rock. She assumed she had seen the last of Dan.
“I hoped I would see him again, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how that was going to happen,” she says. “My co-workers at the elementary school asked me who I dated or what I had done during the summer. I said, ‘I’m finishing up my master’s and I met this really cute guy, but he never called me.’”
She told them Dan’s name, and one of her co-workers, Beverly, announced that Dan had been the best man in her wedding. They had gone to school together in Blytheville, and Dan had introduced her to his fraternity brother, Jim, whom she later married.
“Beverly called me up and said, ‘Hey, there’s a lady there that’s got the hots for you,’” Dan says.
This connection led to a first date for Dan and Gigi at Studebaker’s, a popular Little Rock club.
“We didn’t know anything about each other,” Dan says. “So I took her to happy hour for a couple of glasses of wine and a free buffet.”
They talked for a couple of hours, including about their nieces and nephews — Dan had seven and Gigi had five.
“We were the last ones to get married out of our families — all of our siblings were married and had children,” Gigi says.
That was the start of many dinners together.
They also took many trips to Sugar Loaf Mountain on Greers Ferry Lake with Dan’s family. Most Sundays they went to Baring Cross Baptist Church in North Little Rock, but every once in a while, if the weather was right, they would skip services and go trout fishing on the Little Red River.
Dan proposed after dinner at Steak and Ale in August 1987, during a stroll around Lake Willastein in Maumelle.
“We went out on the dock, and the moon was really pretty, and he told me he loved me and he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me and he wanted to have a family, and he asked me, ‘Would you marry me?’” she says. “I was just so excited.”
Gigi remembers holding her hand up to catch the moon’s reflection on her new diamond ring.
“He goes, ‘Hang on to that ring! Don’t drop it in the lake!’” she says.
They were married on Dec. 12, 1987, at Baring Cross. They honeymooned in Hot Springs, and had dinner at the Hamilton House.
“We came back to our apartment that Gigi had moved into that day, and then we went on a Caribbean cruise that sailed out of San Juan, Puerto Rico,” Dan says.
There were 30 or so newlywed couples on that cruise.
“We still exchange Christmas cards with one of the couples that were there,” Dan says. “We make friends wherever we go.”
That April they went to Oaklawn Racing Park in Hot Springs.
“Neither one of us had any money in the bank to speak of. We paid up all our bills, but we ended up winning $400 that day and that was our first savings account,” Dan says.
Gigi appreciates Dan’s taking the initiative to find things for them to do on weekends. They recently spent a few days at Greers Ferry to celebrate the total eclipse, and on another trip they spent a couple of nights at Oaklawn. They are taking a 10-day Rhine River cruise later in the year.
The Parkers have four children — Emily Raine of Little Rock; Katelyn Erickson of Bella Vista; Anna Ferguson of Olive Branch, Miss.; and Lee Parker of Lowell.
“We have had six grandbabies in three years,” Gigi says. “We have grown exponentially. We have two sets of twins. We are certainly blessed.”
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