Hospital cafeteria workers set her up with him
Hospital cafeterias aren’t the most romantic locales, but for James Syler and Stephanie Martin it offered sausage biscuits and serendipity.
James had just finished a 24-hour shift on an ambulance in Arkadelphia at 6 one morning in the spring of 1999, and he was heading home for a few hours of sleep before going to class.
“I’m tired — I’m exhausted — and I just want food,” he says.
As a hospital employee, he got a 50% discount on food from the cafeteria— and as a college student his money was tight — so he stopped by for a sausage biscuit.
The women behind the counter at the cafeteria were happy to see him.
“The next thing I know, they whip this girl out from behind these closed doors, wearing a hairnet. I’m standing right there as they’re coming through,” James says. “I hear, like, ‘Hiii.’”
Stephanie, who worked in the dietary department at the hospital, was as surprised as he was about their suddenly being face-to-face.
The women she worked with had been on a mission to find a partner for her.
“That morning they said, ‘We think we’ve found somebody and next time he comes through we’re going to introduce you,’” she says. “Lo and behold it probably wasn’t 15 minutes before they went, ‘He’s here!’”
Stephanie’s co-worker yanked the hairnet from Stephanie’s head as she pushed her through the door to face James, and Stephanie worried about how her hair probably looked.
James thought Stephanie was pretty, but they only talked for a few minutes that morning. He saw her again the next day, though, in the hospital lobby.
“I was all dressed up this time,” she says. “It was National Nutrition Month and I was doing my thing out there, handing out brochures, and he stopped to visit with me. That’s when he got my number.”
Their first date was to the Little Rock Zoo, a place James had visited often with his family growing up. Strolling through the zoo gave them a chance to talk and get to know each other.
“There were no distractions, there weren’t the stresses of being in a loud music environment or the craziness of a restaurant,” James says. “It was just the two of us and we actually got to spend three or four hours just walking around talking.”
Their budgets were tight back then, James says. He liked to cook and he made many meals for them in his apartment. They liked going to the Caddo River and playing Frisbee, and they took frequent leisurely drives out to the community fire department where he also worked at the time.
“We would get an ice cream at the Sonic and drive out there,” Stephanie says. “It was a fun, curvy country road to drive on so we would just go out there and turn around and come back.”
James took a trip to see a North Little Rock jeweler who gave steep discounts to employees of the hospital system where he worked.
“I took every cent I had out of my account — it was like 500-and-something bucks,” James says. “I had a run to Little Rock and I said I’m going to go pick up the ring in North Little Rock. I was happy as a clam, and then I got a call from Steph.”
Stephanie’s mother had had a stroke, and James raced back to Arkadelphia to help.
Her mother’s health improved and she was able to return to Arkadelphia a few weeks later, and James waited until then to propose.
“I convinced [Stephanie] we were fighting at the time and I stormed out of her apartment,” he says.
It was a ruse, meant to give him time to make dinner and set the table with roses.
“Then I called her and said, ‘Would you come back over? Let’s work this out,’” he says. “She came over and I had the whole thing set up, and I proposed to her.”
They were married on May 27, 2000.
The women who set them up had places of honor at the wedding.
“The girls thought we would be a perfect match,” Stephanie says. “When we had our wedding, we reserved them seats up front and gave them little corsages so they could attend the wedding of the couple that they put together.”
The newlyweds honeymooned at Disneyland.
James graduated from law school in 2003.
He and Stephanie live in Texarkana, where James is a state attorney and Stephanie works in a bank.
Over the years, they have made many trips to the zoo.
“It really has been one of those magical experiences where everything lined up,” James says.
In 2015, Stephanie was diagnosed with breast cancer and she started treatment at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. James says the zoo served as their “comfort zone” during that time.
“It was our happy place. We could walk around to escape the stresses of life and what was going on in our lives,” he says. “So the zoo, literally from the first date all the way up to today, has been an integral part of who we are as people.”