Bride: Makeysha Adams, 31, Fuchu Air Station, Japan, staff sergeant, Air Force
Groom: Matthew McKinnis, 30, Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, staff sergeant, Air Force
Date/location: April 12, Farish Recreation Area
Meet: Makeysha Adams grew up in North Carolina. Matthew McKinnis was raised in Alabama. In 1993, when they met as teenagers in technical school, they had no idea that shared Southern ideals would lead to marriage, a dozen years and two continents later.
Each joined the Air Force right out of high school and began technical training at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi six months later. “We got there at the same time,” McKinnis says. “Everybody’s looking around. You don’t know anyone, so you’re looking to make friends. She used to go home with me. My parents live 45 minutes to an hour away, depending on how you drive. She’d go home with me to visit.”
“It was like being back home in North Carolina,” Adams recalls, adding that those visits with his family and friends laid the groundwork for the future.
“But during this time, both of us were in relationships,” she says.”The way we were raised: It is just not right to cheat on your boyfriend or girlfriend. That’s just not the thing to do. With that in mind, we ended up being very close friends.”
Match: Both married and divorced in the intervening years. Adams has a son, who is now 7. McKinnis and Adams stayed in touch as they moved from post to post, always alerting the other to a new assignment – California, Florida, Alaska, Nevada, North Dakota, Korea, Japan, and even Afghanistan and Iraq. With similar upbringings, a competitive spirit and passion for sports, the exact same jobs and rank, they had much in common, and much to talk about and learn from each other.
When McKinnis took a three-year stint in special operations, it meant heading into Afghanistan days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. His unit also staged in Jordan and was first into Iraq when the war started. “I would e-mail her before I’d go,” he says.
A knee injury suffered in Iraq sent McKinnis to a job at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. In April 2004, Adams called from her post in Las Vegas and asked, “Are you going to come visit me?”
“We started talking,” McKinnis says. “We picked up like old times, like when we first met, like nothing had changed, and no time had passed.”
Then, Adams too went to Iraq in May 2004. She returned to the U.S. safely in September but got transferred to Japan in January, so she came through Colorado before going overseas.
Marry: “We were talking and laughing,” McKinnis recalls. “I said, ‘It could be OK living with you.”‘
“It’s hilarious to say, but I told him that I loved him with all my heart, but I was ‘too old’ to be chasing him. Granted, he is quick on his feet,” Adams teases. “So, if he wanted to get married, then the ball was in his court.”
Via daily phone calls, near-constant e-mail correspondence and online shopping, McKinnis planned an intimate wedding, including getting a dress for his new bride, who could fly in for only a week.
After braving a 12-hour flight from Japan, wrangling up a flight to Denver and braving a six-hour drive from Denver International Airport to Colorado Springs, when a spring snowstorm snarled road and air traffic, Adams made her way to McKinnis and their wedding at a cabin at Farish Recreation Area – a remote military resort near Woodland Park.
The Rev. Al Balin performed the ceremony on a sunny Tuesday afternoon. There were no guests, no hoopla – just Adams, chilled to the point of goose bumps, and McKinnis.
“Although we could be thrilled if our families could attend,” Adams says, “military life doesn’t always allow that to happen.”
McKinnis planned to take the marriage license to his superiors for processing, along with a request for transfer. “I am keeping my fingers crossed they allow us to be stationed together,” Adams adds. “It is just a matter of timing. Timing is something that both Matthew and I have on our side.”
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