Art gallery created love nest for these two
Meg Daniel had hoped James Hayes’ art exhibit would give her an opportunity to reconnect with friends from college. It actually gave her a chance to reconnect with James.
“We just started talking,” she says.
A single mom in 2006, Meg often went to receptions at Gallery 26, owned by a friend from college.
“That was a place where I could go and probably know some people, and there was no cost,” she says. “There were free hors d’oeuvres and wine and things like that.”
She had decided to go to this one at the last minute, after seeing that James was one of the artists whose work would be shown.
“It was because he was one of the artists but it wasn’t because I was trying to meet him or anything like that,” she says. “It was that he went to Hendrix, too, and I thought maybe there would be some more people there that I knew.”
James graduated in 1986 and she graduated in 1988.
“He was a lot wilder than I was in college,” she says. “He was a hippie kind of guy and he went to Grateful Dead concerts. I was kind of a good girl, and he was kind of a bad boy.”
He was on the golf team and involved in art, and she was an English major who sang in the choir.
“And,” says James, “she took French and I took Spanish.”
James had been friends with the man she would later marry (and divorce), though, and they had several other mutual friends.
James struck up a conversation with Meg that night at the gallery about the necklace she was wearing.
“She had a skull necklace on,” he says. “I said, ‘Oh, I like skulls. Do you have a skull? Like a human skull?’ and she said, ‘Yes, I do. In my head.’”
Both liked travel — she worked with a travel agency — and both, of course, enjoyed art. Both were single and raising kids, as well.
They went to Star of India for their first date. It was sometimes tough for them to coordinate their schedules after that.
James’ glass-blowing business is in Pine Bluff, and he was living there; Meg was in Little Rock.
“We both had kids that lived in different towns,” she says. “We had all sorts of struggles like that.”
They weren’t focused on plans for their future, at least not at first.
“He made sure that he always reminded me that we were just hanging out, and that he was not looking to ever get married again,” Meg says.
She was OK with that, although she had not felt as strongly about anyone else she had dated in the five years she had been divorced.
Meg went to her high school reunion in Camden, and while she was there her ex-boyfriend invited her to go with him — as friends — on a trip to Spain.
“I jokingly said I would go and he said, ‘I’m not kidding. I’ll pay for it,’” she says. “So I went. And when I got back, I got the ‘I love you’ from James.”
James says her taking the trip made him realize he had a good thing, and he didn’t want to lose it.
He and Meg were sitting outside one night after that when he surprised her with a change of heart.
“He said, ‘You know, I’ve been thinking about how I’d kind of like to marry you,’” she says. “It wasn’t really a proposal because it was the first time he had ever mentioned it. But before I knew it we were looking at rings.”
He bought what he called a pre-pre-engagement ring, a $10 number with a fake stone, and told her he “just wanted to try this out.” After that he upgraded to a $50 ring.
“Then he was like, ‘Let’s look at some real ones,’” she says. “It was like he was easing into it.”
James had glasswork for sale in a jewelry store and he suggested she come in with him one day to peek at rings.
She didn’t know he had gotten the ring she chose until he gave it to her over lunch at Burge’s one day.
They exchanged their vows on Aug. 1, 2009, at Quapaw United Methodist Church, with a reception following at Ferneau’s.
James made a vase for their wedding flowers, and Meg designed her wedding dress. They honeymooned in St. Lucia.
Since then, James has inherited a Paris apartment from his late uncle, and he and Meg stay there for a couple of months each year. They travel elsewhere often, as well, recently returning from Ireland.
“We were a really unlikely match,” Meg says. “We’re actually very opposite. He’s extremely outgoing and social and I’m not, really. I like being social but I’m not as comfortable as he is around people. He’s very much an outgoing kind of life-of-theparty person and I’m not.”
They have, however, found plenty of room to connect as well.
“We like concerts,” James says. “We’re going to U2 and Nine Inch Nails concerts – we’re going to a U2 concert in November. And we’re both kind of strange.”
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