Third time’s the charm for off and on couple
Lee Honorable was interested in LaTonya Laird before he even saw her.
“I kept hearing about this beautiful young lady at Forest Heights [Junior High],” says Lee, who was a ninth-grader at Horace Mann Junior High in 1991.
The Parkview Arts and Science Magnet High School ROTC military ball provided the opportunity he needed. He was invited by a friend, a Parkview student, whose date was a girl who went to Forest Heights.
Lee’s friend arranged a blind date for Lee and LaTonya to attend the ball together.
“We had a great time,” Lee says. “We took a picture together that night — the first time we were photographed together — and I had a look of shock on my face because I was like, ‘I can’t believe I’m on a date with LaTonya Laird.’”
LaTonya thought Lee was nice but a little boring.
“I didn’t have a hard, thuggish lifestyle, but he was not very extroverted like I am,” she says. “If he had something to say he said it, but he was fine with sitting in the corner and not being in the forefront. I was always in the public eye in some way, shape or form.”
They saw each other off and on for a little while but eventually drifted apart and lost touch.
As a sophomore, LaTonya went to Central High, where Lee was a senior, but their paths didn’t cross. He wasn’t aware she was on campus until the end of the year when he saw her photo in the yearbook.
“She was even in the homecoming court, but I didn’t see her,” Lee says. “I must have just been talking to my friends or not paying attention. I didn’t see her or hear her name or anything.”
After graduation in 1993, Lee left Little Rock to go to Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in Tallahassee, Fla. LaTonya graduated a year later and went to the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. She finished her undergraduate program early and went straight to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law in Little Rock. Lee started at the same time.
They dated briefly, but again broke up.
Each married and had a family.
They ran into each other on occasion, most often in juvenile court. Lee is a supervising attorney with the Arkansas Department of Human Services and LaTonya is in private practice.
“But for about 10 years we didn’t see each other at all,” she says.
In 2015, LaTonya accepted a Facebook friend request from Lee, and he asked if she would review some documents for him.
Both of their marriages had ended by the time they talked and decided to meet for drinks on a Tuesday night. LaTonya, not sure of the significance of their meeting, invited a friend to join them. Her friend canceled at the last minute, but it was just as well because Lee and LaTonya spent the evening reminiscing.
“We just picked right up where we left off. Of course, we were in the same profession and we knew a lot of the same people, so it was just catching up about what had been going on in our lives,” she says.
“There was a lot of laughter and a lot of peace.”
They were friends for a while before they started dating again in May 2016.
For Lee and LaTonya, their third time around was the charm. In April 2017, Lee asked her to marry him.
They had gone to the beach together a few weeks earlier, with Lee’s two daughters and LaTonya’s one. The girls became instant friends, says LaTonya.
“I found out later that was like a trial run for us, to see if our girls would be able to mesh and what this whole thing would look like,” LaTonya says. “We passed with flying colors.”
Lee asked LaTonya’s daughter to look at the engagement ring he had chosen, to make sure she thought her mother would like it. With her daughter’s approval, he proposed to LaTonya before they joined friends at a concert.
“Some of our friends were there and she showed them the ring,” he says.
They were married on Aug. 12, 2017, at St. Luke Baptist Church in North Little Rock.
“I remember the first part of his vows were, ‘LaTonya, I love you, and I’ve loved you from the first day I met you,’” she says. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”
LaTonya says that for years after she and Lee went out to the military ball together, her mother kept their picture from that night on the wall.
“She always said he was the one,” LaTonya says. “She says she just knew he was.”
LaTonya, however, thinks it was probably best that she and Lee didn’t stay together the first couple of times around.
“I don’t think that I would have been able to fully appreciate him as a person if I had dated him fully at that time,” LaTonya says. “I don’t think it would have worked. I needed that time. But I’ve even had friends and family tell me that they love the way we love each other.”