Cassie Ross first knew Ashton Winkelmeyer as the guy who mooched food from her older sister.
Ashton, who worked at Camp Winnamocka in Arkadelphia, was a friend of Cassie's then-brother-in-law. He spent a good deal of time at their house, sometimes even sleeping on their couch. Cassie, a nurse living in Little Rock, had heard about Ash from her sister but they had only met in passing.
"She was kind of my unicorn," Ash says. "She was like this mythical character that I admired from afar, but I was never really on the same level she was. She was just way out of my league."
He had felt this way for a couple of years when, on Dec. 2, 2007, Cassie was a bridesmaid in a friend's wedding, and the reception was held at Camp Winnamocka.
"We were checking food and stuff, and [rapper] Soulja Boy came on," says Ash, who was on the catering crew.
Ash and another worker left their kitchen posts to show the guests how to do the dance. He wasn't trying to impress anyone.
"We were covered in cocktail sauce because we had been in the kitchen for like 12-hours, and we both had aprons on and we were just gross," Ash says. "There was me, this kind of short, stubby guy, and there was A.J., this gargantuan, mop-headed Adonis-looking guy."
"He was very pretty," Cassie chimes in about A.J. But it was Ash who caught her eye.
On Dec. 12, Cassie had dinner with her mother and then went to Camp Winnamocka's Christmas party, hoping to see Ash.
He had cooked all day to prepare for the event. He and Cassie danced all night.
The next day, even though his friends urged him to wait, he left a voicemail for Cassie. He forgot, however, to leave his number. She could have asked her sister for it, but she doubted her sister would be in favor of a budding romance.
"My sister always said she cleaned up after him and he ate their food and she helped him with his laundry," Cassie says. "She wouldn't have been OK with me dating him."
Ash went to visit his family in Dallas for the holidays and he found some snakeskin cowboy boots in a thrift store in Deep Ellum. He sent a pic of him wearing them to Cassie as a joke.
Cassie laughed, and they texted back and forth all evening. He left Dallas early, driving straight to Arkadelphia to take Cassie "on a proper date" to see a movie.
For their second date, they dressed up in western wear and went to the VFW in Arkadelphia, and they cooked breakfast for dinner and watched "Breakfast at Tiffany's."
She liked that he didn't put on airs.
"He wasn't like other guys, who were trying to be kind of cocky and cool," she says.
Ash left his job at Winnamocka and started a new one in Dallas, and they dated long distance for a bit.
He wasn't a fan of the institution of marriage after watching his parents' contentious divorce.
"We hadn't had those conversations, about what we were going to do," Ash says.
But they decided that Cassie would move to be with him and they would get married.
They eloped, exchanging their vows on Wednesday, April 23, 2008, in a gazebo next to the Basin Park Hotel in Eureka Springs.
Their officiant got alarmingly winded climbing the steep steps to the gazebo, and there were homeless people arguing and playing musical instruments in the vicinity.
"Ashton looked like he was going to have a full-on panic attack," Cassie says.
She and Ash worked together in a bistro near their apartment, Ash as bartender and Cassie in the bakery.
"I was kind of burned out and I was having to get my [nursing] license transferred over so I was just going to do that for a little bit," she says.
Almost a year later, they packed up all their belongings and spent three months traveling the western states with a pop-up camper.
Back home, Ash completed a bachelor's degree in education at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia. He and Cassie moved to Gurdon, where he worked as a teaching paraprofessional and started a soccer team and she was the school nurse.
The Winkelmeyers live in Little Rock with their two sons, Sam, 7, and Indy, 5,. Ash teaches at the Anthony School and coaches youth soccer through the Little Rock Rangers. Cassie is a nurse practitioner at Baptist Health.
Cassie was right about her sister not being immediately supportive of their relationship.
"I'm the younger of the two sisters, and she had always taken care of me growing up, so she said, 'If you guys get married, who is going to take care of who?'" Cassie says.
Her sister was a fan of Ash's by the time they married, though.
"It's funny -- now Ashton is the cook in our house," Cassie says. "When he goes on trips I always give him a hard time about freezing a casserole for me to eat while he's gone."
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The first time I saw my future spouse:
He says: “I was immediately in love. It was two years before our first date, though. I just knew she was out of my league.”
She says: “He was probably on the couch at my sister’s house. I thought he was cute but it was just a quick nice to meet you and then I went on my way.”
On our wedding day:
He says: “I was in a constant panic attack. My parents had just gone through a nasty divorce, and I was scared of that commitment. I was scared I would lose her. But after it was over it was so much fun.”
She says: “I didn’t have any doubts that I was headed in the right direction. I was just calm and pretty excited.”
My advice for a long happy marriage:
He says: “Pre-marriage counseling and post-marriage counseling. And just never give up.”
She says: “Pray. You have to learn to talk to each other.”
Cassie Ross and Ashton Winkelmeyer were married on April 23, 2008, about four months after their first date. “I think we’re probably in the best place in our marriage now that we’ve ever been in,” Ash says. “It seems to kind of just get better and better.” (Special to the Democrat-Gazette)