Friends’ matchmaking sparks still-burning fire
Joe Teeter had a car but no girlfriend, and his friend had a girlfriend but no car. His friend asked him for a favor — and ended up doing the favor of a lifetime for Joe.
Joe had just finished graduate school at the University of Arkansas in April 1960 and had moved from Fayetteville to Little Rock, where he had accepted a job teaching history at Central High School.
Joe’s friend was dating a student at Little Rock University (now UALR), and she was friends with Ann Glover, also a student.
“He wanted to go see his girlfriend so he asked me to take him over there to see her,” Joe says. “When we got there, to the student union, Ann was sitting at the table with her friend.”
Neither Ann nor Joe realized at the time that they had been set up.
“We didn’t figure that out until much later,” Joe says.
They were introduced, chatted a bit, and then went on about their business.
A few days later, their friends suggested they all get together again, and a double-date was arranged, with Joe as the driver.
“I guess we went out but I don’t even really remember that because we didn’t realize what was going on,” Ann says. “Things really started to click after that.”
Joe and Ann began taking in movies together and going to ball games or out for dinner. Ann, a junior at LRU when they met, was a cheerleader her senior year and Joe went to all the games to watch her cheer.
Most of their dates ended with a foray through Ann’s family’s grocery store for treats. Joe’s usual was a Twinkie and a Coke; Ann almost always chose a Snickers bar and a Coke.
“We could get whatever we wanted,” Joe says.
Another favorite ending to their dates was a trip to Granoff ’s at 10th and Main streets for lemon icebox pie and milk.
In early 1962, Joe decided to test the waters of their relationship.
“I wasn’t really sure that she would accept my proposal, so I asked her a question,” he says. “I said, ‘Do you think that you could ever marry anyone like me?’ And she said, ‘Well, maybe.’ So I got a little courage and I said, ‘Well, OK. Will you marry me?’” Ann, of course, said yes. “We had been dating for a while so I knew, but I really didn’t know the time and place,” she says. “It was kind of a surprise. And it was at the Minute Man parking lot, which was on Broadway at the time.”
Joe gave her an engagement ring a few weeks later, a Valentine’s gift that she has taken off her finger only one time in the more than 50 years since — for the birth of their youngest child, Kathy Gladden, who lives in Little Rock with her husband, Joel, and their three children, Kate, Patrick and Joseph. Ann was able to convince doctors to let her wear her ring during the birth of their son, Jody, who lives in Alpharetta, Ga., with his wife, Carolyn, and their children, Boltin and Charlotte.
Ann and Joe were married on June 20, 1962, at what was then Winfield Methodist Church.
They went to Hot Springs for their honeymoon and then settled together in Little Rock. Joe started teaching that fall, and he was also commissioned in the Arkansas Military Academy, founded by a group of Arkansas National Guard officers to guide selected Guardsmen and set standards for Army officers.
“Those three major things happened in my life all at about the same time,” he says. “I got married, I started my career in education and I was commissioned in the Military Academy.”
When Ann graduated she got a job teaching first grade in the Little Rock School District.
Both retired from education — Ann from the Little Rock School District and Joe from the Arkansas Department of Education — in 2001.
Since then, they have spent time reading to children in schools and enjoying time with their grandchildren.
“The day we found out we were having grandchildren we bought a van because we knew we were going to be taking a lot of trips with them,” Ann says.
The whole family gets together for Christmas each year and also for an annual summer trip to Fort Walton Beach, Fla.
“Our life revolves around family,” she says.
They recognize that their lives might look different had it not been for their plotting friends.
“Ann and I double dated with our friends for many months and they eventually parted ways and here we are together 50 years later,” he says. “We are indebted to our friends who introduced us.”