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When Holly first met her future husband on a Friday in November,
2008, she was a single mom whose mind was absorbed with
raising her nine-year-old daughter and working full-time.
Dating was the last thing on her mind.
“I was thirty, divorced, and sad because things had not
turned out the way I’d planned,” Holly remembers. On
that particular day, she stopped in her local Kroger where
she exchanged pleasantries with the manager. There had
been an altercation of some sort in the meat department
and Holly, who also worked as a manager in a retail store
in Vicksburg, laughingly prodded him for information
about what had occurred.
Kroger was closing its original location in Clinton that
day and opening its new one the next morning. On
Saturday, Holly decided to check out the new location’s
sushi offerings with her daughter, ex-husband, and friend
in tow. This wasn’t unusual as the two of them had
maintained a good relationship after their divorce. When
she bumped into the same young manager, they spoke
again. And, to her surprise, Holly found herself attracted
to this stranger....so much so that she went back to let him
know that she was indeed single.
Their attraction became increasingly obvious as Holly
returned to the grocery store the following two days. On
Tuesday, the manager, whose name was Colley, offered to
walk her to her car. But what Holly really wanted - she
told him - was a date. “I was already planning to ask her
out,” Colley insists as they both laugh at the memory.
When he asked if he could take her to lunch the next day,
Holly reminded him that she worked in Vicksburg. He
told her he remembered and could he please come and
take her to lunch. Shocked that he would drive that far,
Holly and her employees at the Gap outlet picked out an
outfit and she took a two-hour lunch break. The date
went so well that the pair decided to meet at IHOP for
breakfast the next morning. That was “the interview,” as
Hometown CLINTON • 25