Having grown up together helped in relationship
Somer Clark and Clif Day are bound by roots that go back to before he grew taller than she.
“Clif’s license plate when he was a teenager said, ‘7TEEN’ — his lucky number is 17,” Somer says. “And we’re 17 days apart. He’s 17 days older than I am.”
They were about 10 years old when they first met at North Little Rock First United Methodist Church in 1988. Clif’s family had just moved to North Little Rock from Camden.
“I would say he was a dork and he says I was a snob, and both are accurate,” she says. Clif doesn’t say that, exactly. “She was really cool and I was a big dork back then,” he says. “Her mother was our Sunday School teacher in both the fifth and eighth grade.”
They were both part of the church youth group, going snow skiing and to the beach with their friends.
“She was always very polite, very well-mannered. Her mother was really big on that and I admire it,” Clif says. “And she would always be overdressed, a little bit, for the occasion.”
Somer’s dad was the business administrator at their church, and Clif sometimes would go and sit in his office.
“He was this cool old dude who had worked for Coca-Cola his whole life and couldn’t stand to be retired so he was working at the church,” Clif says. “A lot of the boys loved to sit in his office. He had all kinds of cool stories.”
Clif went to North Little Rock High School and Somer left for the residential Arkansas School for Mathematics and Sciences, now Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts, in Hot Springs.
They saw each other on occasion, when she was home for weekends or holidays, but for the most part they were out of sight, out of mind.
By 2001, Clif had graduated from the University of Central Arkansas and found a job in Little Rock. Somer had graduated from Ole Miss in Oxford and moved back home to be with her mother, who was very sick.
“One of my friends asked me to go to Big Downtown Thursday at the River Market,” she says. “We went and she said to me, ‘That guy over there is checking you out.’ I was like, ‘Oh, no, that’s Clif Day. I’ve known him since I was a kid.’”
She says Clif came over and asked if they knew each other, and she pretended not to remember his name correctly.
“I’m pretty sure she initiated a conversation with me,” Clif says.
They exchanged numbers and, she says, he called her two days later, on a Saturday, while she was on a date with another guy.
“He thought I was blowing him off, but I called him back on Sunday, and he was like, ‘Hey, I’ve got tickets to this play. Would you like to go?’” she says. “I said, ‘Sure, I’ll go.’”
After they went to Murry’s Dinner Playhouse, he confessed that he hadn’t actually had tickets to the play, but that he got them in hopes of taking her.
A mutual childhood friend got married that June and they went together to the wedding.
“We went out a few more times over the summer, and by the end of the summer we both knew there was obviously something to this,” he says.
Clif’s family had moved to Charlotte, N.C., by then, and in July he and Somer went for a visit. They went out for seafood on that trip, and Clif recalls Somer being, characteristically, overdressed. She had on a nice dress, he says, while everyone else in the group was wearing shorts and sandals.
“It certainly impressed everybody,” Clif says.
While there, they told his family they planned to get married.
“In August, he gave me the ring, and then we were married the following March, so it was 10 months from the time we ran back into each other to the time we got married,” Somer says. “We had grown up in the same town and we knew all the same people and we really had the same upbringing. It was just very easy and very natural.”
They were married on March 9, 2002, at First United Methodist Church of North Little Rock, the same church where they met.
“Clif and I went to youth group together and actually we went to confirmation together,” Somer says. “Clif and I were baptized, confirmed and married and then baptized our kids, all on the same altar.”
The Days’ children — Vivian, 18, Bauer, 16, and Frances, 13 — have inherited their mother’s “classy attitude,” according to Clif.
Clif and Somer honeymooned in Tunica, Miss., not wanting to go too far while Somer’s mother was ill. Her mother died during their first year of marriage.
“Also that first year, we bought a house, Clif changed careers and I graduated from nursing school,” Somer says. “It was a lot.”
They have traveled a good bit since then, including trips to Hawaii and Italy.
“We have more than made up for it in terms of travel,” Clif says. “We’ve had a lot of fun.” If you have an interesting howwe-met story or if you know someone who does, please call (501) 425-7228 or email: