Goodbye, city life: Southern gent charms NYC girl
What happens when a Southern country boy bumps into a Manhattan socialite and uses language she can’t quite comprehend?
For Dr. Mickey Matthews and Karen Collins, that was the kickoff of a big adventure.
In 1991, they were both at the Yankee Dental Congress, an annual trade show in Boston that attracts dentists from New York to Maine. Mickey, a Little Rock native, lectured at the conference about dental trends and extended his trip so he could see the Pointer Sisters perform in the hotel. Karen, a dental hygienist from Manhattan, had stayed over for the same reason.
“I was dressed real ‘Texas’ because I had been living in Dallas for 20 years,” Mickey says. “I had my George Strait look going on. I had my jeans and my cowboy boots and my western belt.”
“I bumped into her and I turned around — and she is just a doll. I thought, ‘Oh my gosh …’ and I got real Texas, and I said, ‘Can I stand here if I don’t act up?’” Karen was flummoxed. “I wasn’t really sure what to think,” she says.
She didn’t know what he meant, and she wasn’t sure that mattered. “I also thought it was cute and he had a sparkle in his eye and he’s just my size — he’s the perfect size for me,” she says.
They made small talk, and then went about their lives. “The practice where I worked was using some of the products he was involved with, so we spoke on the phone a few times,” she says.
She went to listen to him at the next conference in Boston, a year later, and afterward they realized they had far more to say — colloquialisms be darned.
“That’s when our love of dentistry really connected us because I liked his approach to patients and his quality of care and his kindness to patients and I felt like we were very well-aligned,” she says.
For the next two and half years, they got together as often as they could in the major cities where he lectured.
“We covered this country from coast to coast, from Seattle to Miami, from Boston to San Diego … Our courtship covered the entire United States and up into Canada and down into the Caribbean.”
He proposed to her in an Italian restaurant in Baltimore a year and a half or so after their second meeting.
“I also proposed in Chicago, Dallas, San Antonio, San Francisco, San Diego. People [would] always say, ‘Well, did she ever say yes?’ and she always said yes,” Mickey says. “But then I would say, ‘It was so much fun that I said, ‘Let’s do it again in Atlanta next month.’”
She wasn’t saying no, but she had a job she loved and a home in Manhattan. Also, Mickey had custody of two young children from a previous marriage, and she wasn’t sure what sort of stepmother she would be.
“I had her come down for about a 10-day jaunt, and we toured Arkansas to make sure she would be happy here. I didn’t want her to get down here and not be happy,” says Mickey, who was living in Batesville and Little Rock in December 1993. “We kind of test drove Arkansas so she could see it, and she loved it.”
She flew into Little Rock, and he picked her up at the airport.
“I walked right under the brim of his cowboy hat and gave him a kiss. He said nobody had ever walked right under the brim of his cowboy hat without knocking it off,” she says.
She loved Arkansas as much as she loved him.
Mickey and Karen and Mickey’s children, Kari and Cole, then 6 and 7, went to Eureka Springs in December 1994, ahead of an ice storm that closed down Thorncrown Chapel, where they had planned to exchange their vows. They were married there on Dec. 28, 1994, the first day roads were clear enough for them to venture out. Cole and Kari were their witnesses.
Cole, who now lives in Hot Springs, dubbed Karen their “backup mom.”
“Like his dad, he loves language, and he sometimes makes up words,” she says. “It’s a sweet title that I cherish.”
Mickey is president of the Spa City Bop and Swing Club. He is retired from the Village Dental Group, which they opened after moving to Hot Springs Village 20 years ago. Karen is a dental hygienist there.
Karen and Mickey may have had an occasional miscommunication over the years, but they understand that they’re on this journey together.
“It’s been quite an adventure,” Mickey says, “and the adventure goes on.” kdishongh@sbcglobal.net