From Church Pews to Skating Rinks: Where LC Found Love
LOVE, LOCALLY: The question was simple—Where did you meet the love of your life?—but the answers painted a whole county’s worth of meet-cutes. The most common chorus rang out from two familiar places: church and school. “Church,” wrote Sherry Nelson, noting she and her husband will celebrate 41 years this October. Richard Hunt and a dozen others echoed her, while Hannah Henderson and Renae Johnson added church singings to the list. Halls and homerooms followed closely—Speake High, East Lawrence, Hazlewood, Hatton, Calhoun, UNA—where glances in biology class (Rhonda Louallen), band rooms (Kristi Smith Hatton), and parking lots (Heather Rainey Johnson) rewrote teenage schedules for life.
If steel and chrome had a vote, the skating rinks might win on style points. “At the old Muscle Shoals Skateland—where Aldi is now. I had just ripped my pants!” laughed Eva Beavers Anderton, who married three years later, opened a rink of her own, and just celebrated 49 years. Langton/Langtown Skating Rink showed up twice—Fran Hill remembers the exact date, 01/01/1970, and Barbara Brannon marked 59 years this spring. The Moulton Skating Rink connected families, too; “We each had our kids there for birthday parties,” said Marcie Gladwell, “and his sister introduced us.”
Parking lots and drive-ins proved that romance doesn’t need mood lighting. Winn-Dixie’s asphalt—now Foodland—was practically a matchmaker: Tina LouAllen, Tina Garrison, and Ken Jett all checked in from there. The Cardinal Drive-In hosted first jobs and first hellos, while the car wash beside Country Mart (Joyce Givens Crow) was, in its day, an unofficial social club. Melanie King split her origin story between McDonald’s and Kroger in Hartselle; Gloria Etheredge also met at McDonald’s in Decatur—on a blind date. And some nights, the barstool did the introducing: the Frontier Lounge (Jerri Wilbanks Ray), Crystal Pistol Saloon in Fort Myers (Shane Jackson), TK’s in Decatur (DeeAnna Taylor Brooks), and Saints.
Love arrived at work more often than not. Battery plants and break rooms (Donna Greene at “Wally World”), machine ops and teigel welding (Deborah Murphree), the YMCA (Carrie Medders Barnett), the Boat Harbor in Decatur (Michele Graves), a car dealership parts counter (Carlene Heflin), and even an emergency management office back when it was “Civil Defense” (Paulette W. Williams). Some clock-ins were unforgettable for other reasons: “At a crime scene!” wrote Tina Hamilton McWhorter. For Danielle Finger Reaves, a domestic-violence call when she was 21 led to a whirlwind courtship and May 1997 wedding; her deputy-sheriff husband was killed in 2001. Several readers—Rhonda Hovater Bailey, Nicole Baird, Sandra Wood—shared long marriages that ended in loss, honoring partners gone but not forgotten.
Blind dates held their own, from living rooms to China Dragon. “One of ‘those people you meet in bars’ has now been my spouse for over 32 years,” Jerri added with a wink. Others met by pure neighborly luck—“Two doors down,” said Angela Charles—or by sibling intervention: “My sister kidnapped me and dropped me off,” admitted Sandy Coffey Frost, grateful she lost that argument. In Courtney-romcom fashion, flat tires pushed plots forward: Carrie Porter Thrasher remembered ice cream for the girls while Coy and a cousin changed a stubborn wheel after Sea of Love. He still drives the green ’67 Mustang.
The internet age logged in with a flourish. “On web TV—25 years, soul mates,” wrote Andrea Letson Dean. Eric Wright remembered an AOL chatroom in the dial-up years; Karen Nelson and Kortney Michelle Flake found partners on POF; MySpace (Eric Worldserpent) and Tinder (Kaydee Jones Hodges) also made the roll call; Lisa Parker even credited the WDRM date line, and Teri Smith confessed to meeting on Adult Friend Finder—two decades strong.
County landmarks threaded through the comments like pins on a map: Joe Wheeler State Park, Knight’s gas station, Moulton Speedway, the square in Moulton, Mallard Creek, Hazlewood football nights, the Hatton picnic, Aladdin’s Castle at the Decatur Mall, Alfonsos Pizza and a stranded trip to Six Flags, the Moulton stockyard, the auction, and—local deep cut—the car wash hangout at Country Mart. Some stories were delightfully specific: “At my granddaddy’s roping pin,” smiled Frances Garrison Rainey. Others were pure Alabama humor. Eric Frost, painted head-to-toe in yellow house paint when love walked up, has been married 45 years and “would not trade her for a spotted heifer.”
There were notes from those still looking—“I don’t even got a love of my life… so I’m just gonna say, where he @,” joked Joann Pollard; “I’m still looking,” added Danny Campbell and Dewayne Naylor—and at least one who isn’t taking applications. “Who?” deadpanned Katie Tillman, winning the comment-section timing award.
If there’s a pattern beyond pews and pep rallies, it’s this: love in Lawrence County tends to start where people already are—church steps, school corridors, rinks and restaurants, shift changes and small talk, a cousin’s couch or a friend’s front porch. It’s also patient. Tammy Jeffreys laughed about a grade-school note with the boxes for yes/no; she checked “no,” dated a few years, married at 20, and just marked 30 years. Some stories sprinted—Carrie and Coy met in ’89 and married in 1990; others took the long way, like Ashley Danielle, who met at Med-Call Ambulance in 2009, dated off and on, reunited in 2024, and says she’s “more in love… than ever.”
In the end, the map matters because it’s ours. The places we pass every day—the square, Jack’s where China Dragon is now, the Chevron at East Lawrence—double as landmarks for first glances, second chances, and the long, ordinary miracle of choosing each other again and again. As one reader put it, summing up the whole thread with a grin: “Good enough,” wrote Donald Jones. Around here, that often turns out to be more than enough.
What place in Lawrence County would you tell a single friend to hang out if they wanted to meet good people? If you could put a commemorative “Love Started Here” plaque anywhere in the county, where would it go—and why?