The Duck Commander Family (12 page)

Willie and I saw each other at the mall a few weeks after Christmas, and it was just one of those moments. Willie was attending seminary school at White’s Ferry Road Church and was living with six guys in a small house in town. A couple of days after we saw each other in the mall, Willie walked into his house and there was a chair turned around facing the front door. It had a yellow piece of paper taped to it. It was a message for him, telling him that I had called. I knew that since I had rejected him the last time he asked me out, I would have to be the one to break the ice again. He called me the next day and we went to lunch at Bonanza. It didn’t take long before we started dating each other pretty seriously, in January 1991.

Like I said, Willie was living with six other guys in town, but even then, he wasn’t exactly living in the house. There was a small storage building out back, which he turned into his own room. He painted all the furniture black and white, and Granny made him a quilt to put on his bed. He had a TV and a window unit for air-conditioning, which he bought with his own money. It was like his little bachelor pad and the first place he could really call his own. Willie was working for my uncle Mac, who owned a cabinet-building shop. Willie worked for Mac throughout high school, cleaning up the shop and doing some woodwork. Mac helped Willie buy his first car, which was a 1980 Ford Mustang. It was bright orange and
had white leather seats, which were all torn up, but it got him where he was going.

I used to love going to Willie’s little house before school. He would cook me these elaborate omelets and even put a garnish on the top of them. Up till that time, I was never one for waking up early, and I’m still not, for that matter. But during our dating days, I didn’t mind getting up early if it meant I got to spend a little more time with Willie. Plus, his cooking really impressed me. Willie’s actually very romantic, which a lot of people might not realize. He’s written me a ton of love notes and even poems, and he likes to cook for me. Thankfully after twenty years of marriage those things haven’t changed.

Willie and I dated for about eight months, and then I was getting ready to leave for school at Harding University. Willie was still attending seminary school, and I wanted him to go to Harding University with me. But Willie said he wasn’t leaving West Monroe. He wanted me to stay in West Monroe with him. We broke up before I left for school in August, and I’m sure he thought I’d find someone else at college, because that’s what typically happens when you leave home. Willie called me one night in September 1991 after I had been gone a few weeks and said, “Let’s get back together.” I knew I loved him, but I told him I wasn’t sure about it. He was trying to change my life, and it was really his way or no way. I just didn’t know what to do.

“Let me think about it,” I said. “I’ll call you back tomorrow.”

I
was
convinced she’d found someone else. I was telling all my buddies that it was over between us, and I was gathering other girls’ phone numbers to prepare myself to move on. I just knew it was over, and I wasn’t waiting to hear it from her the next day. I was convinced she wanted to end our relationship but couldn’t muster the courage to tell me. Korie called me the next day, and I was ready to tell her that I didn’t want to get back together anymore and that our relationship was over. I was certainly going to end it before she ended it. I just knew she already had a new boyfriend at Harding.

“I’ve got something I want to tell you,” Korie told me.

“What do you want to say?” I asked her, deciding I’d better hear her out first.

“Let’s get back together,” she said.

My ears started buzzing. I threw all the girls’ phone numbers in the trash can. About a month later, Korie and I decided we were going to get married.

Korie:
I had turned eighteen in October 1991, so legally I was allowed to do whatever I wanted. But I knew I had to call my parents, Johnny and Chrys, to get their permission. We had had some discussions about my getting married that summer that had not gone so well, so I knew they were not going to be excited about it. I mustered up the courage to make the phone call.

“Look, I’m legal, so I’m just going to say it,” I told them. “I’m getting married, and you’re going to have to be behind me or not.”

Of course, my parents told me it was the worst idea ever, and they were naturally worried that I was going to leave school and come home. They asked me to at least wait until I’d finished college. I hung up the phone and called Willie immediately.

“I just told them and it didn’t go so well,” I blurted out.

“They’ve already called me and they’re on their way over here,” he said.

I was trying to save money, so I was living with my brother Alan and Alan’s wife Lisa. Korie’s parents came to the house to see me, and I sat on the couch with Johnny and Chrys. It was not pretty. The argument was so loud that Alan came out of his room. He looked at us and asked, “What in the world is going on?” Johnny was making all of his arguments, and I was acting like a little punk, twisting his words to put them in my favor, which only made him madder and madder.

Johnny told me that according to studies he’d read, 50 percent of all marriages between young people ended in divorce. He had the articles with him to support his arguments.

“So you’re calling that right now?” I asked him. “In all your wisdom, you know we’re going to get divorced?”

“I’m not saying that,” Johnny told me.

“You just said it,” I responded. “You just said half end in divorce. Well, what if we’re the good half?”

Then Johnny went on to say that if we got married, he didn’t want me coming to him for advice. But then later on in the conversation, he told me I could ask him about anything.
He was completely irrational, and I, of course, had to point that out to him.

“You just said I couldn’t ask you for advice,” I told him.

He was so mad, I thought he was going to leap off the couch and hit me. Before they left, Johnny looked at me and asked me one last question.

“What’s your plan?” he asked.

“What’s my plan?” I said to him.

“What exactly is your plan?” he said. “Where are you going to work? Where are you going to live?”

“Well, I reckon I’ll just buy a trailer and put it on the back property at Phil’s house,” I told him.

That threw Johnny over the top. He and Chrys stormed out of Alan and Lisa’s house, and I was convinced there was no way they were going to give us their blessing to get married. I called Korie to tell her how the meeting went.

“It went terrible,” I told her. “We were yelling at each other. It was pretty ugly.”

Then Korie had to hang up because her parents were calling her phone. She called me back a few minutes later.

Much to my surprise, her parents told her, “Okay, if you’re determined to do this, we’re going to support you.”

Johnny didn’t say much to me for the next few months, during the planning of the wedding, and I knew Korie’s parents still didn’t like the idea of her getting married so young.
I told Phil that Korie’s parents didn’t want us getting married and asked him what I should do.

“Here’s what I’d do,” Phil said, while sitting back in his recliner. “I’d call them up and say, ‘Y’all missed that. The wedding was last week when we went to the justice of the peace and got married. Y’all missed the whole thing.’ ”

Korie:
I had never heard my dad yell like he did that night at Willie before that time, nor have I heard it since, but you know daddies and their daughters. I think Willie understands this a little more after having daughters of his own. Thinking back, it makes me laugh to imagine Willie and my dad in that room squaring off. My daddy has since said he didn’t have a problem with Willie’s marrying me, it just scared him for me to do it at only eighteen. Which was the same age my mom was when they got married, as I kindly pointed out. I had a scholarship to Harding University, which is where both my parents went to school, and that was kind of the plan for my life—to graduate from Harding University and then get married and raise a family. My parents were worried I was going to get married, quit school, and start having babies. But as soon as they decided to support us, that was it. They were completely behind us and wanted to make sure Willie and I would be happy. They
never said another word about not wanting me to get married so young. Willie and my father rode together to the church before our wedding, and Daddy told him he would never say another word about it, and he hasn’t.

We had the biggest, most beautiful wedding on January 11, 1992. It was like a winter wonderland, complete with ice sculptures and white trees. There were probably about eight hundred people at our wedding, and it was a big mix of both of our families. Phil wore corduroy pants and a button-down shirt—he refused to wear a suit or tuxedo—but I didn’t care. It was a wonderful wedding. My parents took us to Hawaii the next summer, which was kind of like our honeymoon because we didn’t have a chance to take one after we got married.

The day after Willie and I were married, we took another big step in our lives—we moved to Searcy, Arkansas, where Willie started classes with me at Harding University.