After years of living on streets, couple says ‘I Do’ in fresh start
Valentine’s Day wedding follows 20-year romance
The bride wore floralprint leggings and a turquoise T-shirt dress with beaded flats she bought for the occasion.
The groom wore khakis and a red-and-blue striped shirt.
It was the culmination of a 20-year romance that started on the ground outside a Mexican restaurant closed for remodeling, where the couple had huddled behind construction fencing to spend the night.
“We both kind of woke up, I don’t know, 6:30, 7 in the morning,” Amy Graham recalled Wednesday. “We rolled over and looked at each other and I just smiled at him. He said, ‘Will you marry me?’”
Since then, Graham and James Spicer have lived in tents, camping in wooded areas along FM 1960 in northwest Houston. They’ve done odd jobs and held signs at intersections to get by. They’ve gotten sporadic hot showers and frequent help from friends.
But with the help of the nonprofit HOPE Haven, their lives are changing.
They just moved into their first apartment last month. And on Valentine’s Day, they made good on that long-ago, early morning promise: Graham and Spicer got married.
“She looks so beautiful right now,” her friend Rochelle Rosario said before the ceremony. “You look beautiful, baby!”
Graham turned and saw Rosario sniffling. She smiled.
“Stop! Rochelle, you’re going to make me cry.” Long-ago promises
Graham, 50, and Spicer, 57, met nearly 20 years ago. But this is not a story of love at first sight.
“I didn’t like him,” Graham said. “He didn’t like me.”
Fairly new to living on the streets then, she had starting flying a sign, asking for money at the intersection of FM 1960 and T.C. Jester. Spicer, who pretty much ran the show on that block, decided she was encroaching on his territory.
“I pretty much had an attitude (that) I run the whole four corners,” he said.
But proximity forced the two to tolerate each other — and eventually, cold weather forced them to warm up to each other. One dangerously cold weekend many Decembers ago, a friend gave Spicer a room for the night at a motel on FM 1960. Spicer wanted to share the wealth with someone — it was bitterly cold — and when a close friend couldn’t take him up on the offer, he invited Graham to share the room.
“He said, ‘Amy, look. I promise I’ll keep my hands to myself. I’ll put pillows down the middle of the bed,’” Graham said. “What’s a girl to think?”
But it was just as Spicer promised. Graham took a hot shower, she said, and “I come out and he literally had pillows stretched out down the middle of the bed.”
They soon became an onagain, off-again couple, and, eventually, a serious one, finally moving into a single big tent together — a red-and-gray one that held a bed, a couch and a 55-gallon barrel that they used to build fires to keep warm.
They did drugs. They drank alcohol. They lived outside, earning money on street corners and doing odd jobs in the neighborhood.
About 10 years ago, they had an informal wedding ceremony in the woods. There was no marriage license, so it wasn’t a legal marriage, but a friend who had left the streets to become an ordained minister volunteered to officiate. Only one other person showed up, Spicer said.
“My drug dealer who was selling us crack, he was the maid of honor and the best man,” Spicer said. That was before Spicer and Graham found HOPE Haven, before they cleaned up their lives and got off the streets.
In 2010, Graham met Kristyn Stillwell, who was starting a nonprofit to help the homeless. It took some time, but Stillwell and her team worked to get Spicer and Graham into a real home.
Ray Walker became their HOPE Haven caseworker about a year ago.
“They’re very good people,” he said. “There’s a social network out there, and they’re not the ones who are stealing from other homeless. They’re the ones who are looking out for other people, kind of the leadership out there.”
Walker helped Graham and Spicer get their state ID cards, Social Security cards and birth certificates replaced — not an easy task, but a crucial one for anyone who hopes to get off the streets.
Without that material, “you can’t get a job, you can’t get a place to live, you can’t get a vehicle, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t,” Graham said. “They have just helped us so much. It’s almost insane.”
The two haven’t dropped all their vices altogether, Walker said. But “they have a willing heart and they’re listening and they’re really trying to move forward,” he said. “They have responsibilities now.”
Getting into a real home took some patience. But once they were in the system, there was good news: Graham, who has seizures, qualified for permanent supportive housing for her disability.
She and Spicer moved into an apartment in January, a onebedroom place in northwest Houston. It has a cushiony beige couch, a solid wood kitchen table and a sparkling clean blue-andwhite shower curtain.
The couple is responsible for paying the electric bill each month. For now, they’re out every day doing odd jobs to collect money to live on.
“He and I have both flown a sign, and I hate doing that and he hates doing that,” Graham said. “So we try our best, left and right, to work: Want me to mop your floor, want me to clean your bathroom, want me to clean your windows? I’d rather work for it than beg for it.”
And with a new apartment and a new outlook, the two wanted to marry again and make it official.
“I want to make it legal, I want to make it upright,” Graham said. “I want it to stand in the arms of God. I want it to be what it is.”
Exchanging vows
On Wednesday morning, two dozen people crowded into a small suite at Champion Forest Baptist Church.
Spencer Littlejohn, HOPE Haven’s chaplain, married the couple, and guests celebrated afterward with punch and red velvet cake.
Before they exchanged vows, Littlejohn gave the couple a short sermon on marriage.
“The person standing next to you will likely fail and disappoint you at times, and you may likely fail and disappoint your spouse,” he said.
A giggle rose up in the crowd, and Graham laughed, too.
“That’s highly possible,” she said with a roll of her eyes.
Graham and Spicer have already been through the worst. Now they’re ready for the best — or, at least, a fresh start and a clean slate.
“It’s been a travel,” Graham said, looking back at their two decades together. “But I’ve had him and he’s had me.”
“It’s been a travel, but I’ve had him and he’s had me.” Amy Graham