At work, she knew he would make a great father
Kevin Nolder and Robin Scott had whispered to each other in a darkened room as they tiptoed among napping preschoolers for months before he finally asked her out — just one week before she moved home to Little Rock.
“I never would have thought I’d have had a chance,” Kevin says.
Kevin and Robin both grew up in Little Rock. Kevin graduated from Central High and Robin graduated from Mount St. Mary Academy and their paths had not crossed then, or even later, when they were both at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
Robin graduated in December 1998 but stayed in Fayetteville with her brother, who was to finish in May 1999, before moving back to Little Rock.
Kevin graduated in May 1998 and had been working at the New School in Fayetteville for about a year and a half when Robin got a job there in January 1999, taking the place of an assistant in the 4-year-old class who got married and moved away.
“That was one of the classes I worked with most of the time,” Kevin says. “We would chitchat on the playground while watching the kids.”
Toward the end of the school year, “Star Wars: Episode 1 — The Phantom Menace” came out and Kevin went to see it with one of the 4-year-olds from the school.
“I babysat for him occasionally and we had talked about Star Wars and talked about Star Wars and talked about Star Wars,” Kevin says. “I had gone to Little Rock and seen it at the [Cinema 150] theater there.”
Kevin mentioned wanting to see it again while he was at the New School, and the lead teacher suggested he invite Robin.
“I had not thought about asking her out because I really thought she was out of my league. But I was like, ‘OK, I guess I’ll kind of throw that out there,’ because what did I have to lose?” he says. “She was going to be gone in about a week, so if she said no, you know, there would be no loss.”
Robin agreed to go. “We had visited a bunch. We would be on the playground together and we were in the same classroom together, so we had a lot of opportunities to talk,” she says. “Going to the movies didn’t seem like something out of the ordinary.”
They spent as much time together as possible that next week, her last in Fayetteville.
“We mostly just kind of hung out at her place while she packed,” says Kevin, who wondered why he hadn’t asked her out earlier.
Kevin was back in Little Rock for a date with Robin to Pops on the River on the Fourth of July.
That was the beginning of a three-year long-distance relationship. Robin was committed to living in Little Rock near her family, and Kevin wasn’t ready to give up on his hope of living in Fayetteville.
“I knew I wanted to meet someone I felt like was going to be a good husband, but even more important than that, a good dad,” says Robin, who had watched him interact with the children at school.
Kevin proposed to Robin on Christmas Eve 2002, as they walked among the Jennings Osborne Christmas light display in Riverfront Park after midnight Mass.
“Our first official date was there, because it was Pops on the River,” says Kevin, “so that’s where I wanted to do it.”
Their wedding was on July 26, 2003, at Christ the King Catholic Church in Little Rock, followed by a reception at the Little Rock Club.
“He had a big Razorback cake for his groom’s cake,” Robin says.
Kevin had picked up that cake in Fayetteville the morning he left town for the rehearsal dinner, and he had driven to Little Rock with the air conditioner blasting so it wouldn’t melt.
“I was wearing flip flops and my feet were frozen by the time I got here,” says Kevin, an avid Razorbacks fan.
Robin surprised him on their wedding day with a custom wedding band, encircled with Razorbacks.
“His dad drove us from the reception in an antique car, a convertible, and we stayed at the Peabody,” she says.
They honeymooned in Hawaii, flying over with another couple. They stayed on opposite side of Honolulu from their friends but got together for a couple of outings during the week, including a day of golf for the guys and a day of shopping for the gals.
The Nolders have two sons — Noah and Ryan — and Robin says Kevin is as great a father as she thought he would be.
“He is,” she says. “And he spoils me a lot.”
Kevin says he and Robin were meant to be together.
“This is the kindest person ever. Everybody thinks they have the best spouse but people will admit to me that mine’s really good,” he says. “She is ‘glass is nine-tenths of the way full — at least.’ I am, ‘glass is flipped over in the desert.’ We’re really good for each other in that respect. I feel like everything happens for a reason and there’s a grand design.”