Faith question opens door for a lifetime of love
Sarah Argue answered a message from Matthew Anderson while she was on a beach vacation with friends.
“We joke that the only reason he got a second conversation was that I asked him about his faith background,” Sarah says of their first interaction through an online dating site back in March 2018. “That was one of my check-the-box questions, to see where a new person stands.”
Matthew told her he had grown up as a Baptist but that he liked to watch church services on television on Sunday morning, and he asked if she had heard of Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church.
She had, indeed, heard of it. It’s her home church. She grew up there. Her grandfather was pastor of the church for many years and her father led there as well.
Sarah didn’t say so at the time, though.
“It was his story, and I didn’t want to take it over,” she says.
She took it as a sign, though, that maybe she should give him a little more attention.
After a month or so of messaging through the service and then texting, they decided to move to phone calls.
“I remember liking his voice,” she says. “He has a very pleasant voice. And we had such natural conversation. It didn’t feel forced and even when there were pauses, it didn’t feel awkward.”
Sarah went on a cruise with her family not long after they started talking, and shortly after they got back, her dad, former state Sen. Jim Argue, was diagnosed with stage IV kidney cancer. He died three weeks later.
“It was two full months of conversation before we met face-to-face before,” she says. “That really gave me the opportunity to see Matthew’s character and the person that he was. He displayed just amazing emotional intelligence, where he stayed present and available but never intrusive while my family was going through some really intense, horrible experiences. I remember thinking, ‘This is the kind of person that lasts.’”
In May 2018, they finally had their first date. They met for lunch at Whole Hog and then saw a movie. Their conversation continued for hours after the credits rolled, and they moved to happy hour at a Mexican restaurant.
“I would say it went pretty well,” she says. “It was easy and interesting and intellectually challenging and it wasn’t boring and it wasn’t forced.”
They learned they shared interests and values — and they discovered each had a dog named Fred — hers a beagle/
English Spaniel mix and his a chocolate Labrador.
Sarah and Matthew took turns visiting each other in Warren (where he lived) and Little Rock almost every weekend after that.
Over Labor Day weekend in 2018, they took a trip to New York to see Bruce Springsteen on Broadway. While they were there, they discussed their future.
“We just had a wonderful trip. It was just all the magic. It was also the most days in a row that we’ve had the opportunity to spend together because weekends are short,” Sarah says.
Sunday, Oct. 28, was crisp and sunny, and Matthew asked Sarah if they could spend the afternoon reading on her deck. Sarah thought that sounded wonderful.
She had missed a call from her best friend earlier in the week, so she grabbed her phone on the way out the door to return her call. She realized after a bit that Matthew hadn’t joined her so she called inside to check on him.
Matthew had been inside waiting for Sarah to finish her conversation.
“Thirty minutes into the conversation, there was a little bit of anxiety,” he says.
When she hung up, he sat on the edge of a chair facing her.
“He was kind of serious. He says, ‘I wanted to ask you what you’re doing for the rest of your life,’” Sarah says. “He slid down on his knee. He said, ‘I hope you’ll spend the rest of it with me.’”
Sarah and Matthew were married on May 25, 2019, at Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church.
The week after their wedding, they went to the Arkansas Conference of the United Methodist Church in Hot Springs.
“Summer of 2018 was the first year since 1965 that an Argue had not been at the Arkansas United Methodist annual conference. And when I was asked to serve for the church, it was it meant a lot to me. We call that Honeymoon Version 1.0.”
Version 2.0 was a cruise to Mexico.
They spent their first anniversary sharing oysters and champagne at home. There was much to celebrate this year because falling in love was an unexpected surprise for both of them.
“I have a very close family, and I’ve got a job that I love and have awesome friends, and so I just didn’t see any need to bring a husband into the mix,” she says. “I was adamant that
whoever I was going to marry was going to be a value-add to my happiness, that he was going to make that equation better than it already was. Matthew was awesome in all of the ways that are important and lasting.”
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