Their story

Sometimes you’ve just got to love the one you’re with, as the song says, and then sometimes your soul mate is right around the corner.

Holly Humphries, 21, and her fiance, Brennan Duke, 22, met while Holly was visiting a mutual friend in Fayetteville, where Brennan was going to college. Holly, who is a student at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., but who is from North Little Rock, was dating a guy in New York, so needless to say she wasn’t looking for a new relationship.

But when Brennan first saw Holly, “I said to myself ‘There’s my wife. It was a weird feeling — I just knew.”

The two stayed up all night talking, and Holly got an inkling that maybe Mr. New York wasn’t Mr. Right.

“I had never been attracted to another guy,” Holly said. “But I was drooling on myself. He looked so handsome in his [Army combat uniform].

Brennan and Holly spent many weekends together that summer, even though they lived three hours apart.

Brennan was sure that they would be together one day — he started saving for her engagement ring the day after meeting her — but had to be patient and wait for Holly to realize it, too.
During a visit to New York to see her boyfriend, Holly realized she was falling for Brennan.

“Something had changed. My physical self was in New York, but my heart was in Fayetteville,” she said. “It was at that moment that I realized I was in love with Brennan, my best friend.”

She broke up with her boyfriend, and Brennan and Holly started dating in June 2008. On Nov. 21, in front of the Terry House in Little Rock, Brennan got down on one knee and proposed.

He has since transferred to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock to be closer to Holly. And while she must return to Nashville, Tenn., for her senior year of college this fall, they hope to see each other every weekend.

The couple plan to marry on Saturday, June 26, 2010, at the Terry House.

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