Cindy and Bill Self, who met while they were cheering and playing basketball, respectively, for Oklahoma State University.

Al Ballard, who met Barbara while she was a recent college graduate, visiting her parents in Texas.

Barbara Ballard

Lee Beth and Mike Dever, who met while working together for then-Lawrence firm Hall-Kimbrell.

John and Deanell Tacha, who met while Deanell was volunteering for a law firm in Concordia.

Not everybody grows up to be a mayor, a state legislator, a federal judge or a national championship college basketball coach.

But somehow, these folks ended up finding teammates in life, love and everything else that goes a marriage.

This Valentine’s Day week, we offer these glimpses into the early days of some relatively prominent partnerships — relationships born years ago and still growing today.

Barbara and Al Ballard

Barbara, now a state representative, had been visiting her parents for a week in Texas, after she’d graduated from Webster University in St. Louis. The folks were going to one of dad’s fraternity events, an Alpha dance. Dad suggested that his daughter attend, and even mentioned a “bachelor guy” she could call for a date.

“So I called him, and this guy says: ‘I know your dad. I would love to take you, but I already have a date,'” Barbara recalls. “So I said, ‘OK, fine.’ And we left it that way.”

She went to the dance — no date, just mom and dad — and was surprised to take a call two or three days later from Al, saying he really wanted to go but couldn’t.

“So we went out, and I ended up staying home for some additional time,” she says. “We dated 13 days.”

Al soon convinced Barbara to join him in visiting his family in Louisiana. Al, then an Army captain, was headed to Vietnam, and Barbara soon had met mom, dad and 10 of Al’s 12 sisters.

Al went to Vietnam. Barbara went back to St. Louis, then to Chicago. They wrote letters, even talked by satellite a few times.

Once back in the states — this time in Monterey, Calif. — Al popped the question at an old-style Mexican restaurant. Dropped the ring in a margarita and everything.

Al and Barbara married Jan. 4, 1969.

Deanell and John Tacha

Deanell, living at home in Scandia after her first year in law school at the University of Michigan, had been volunteering at a small law firm in Concordia, 25 miles away from her parents’ place.

“I go through the whole summer,” she remembers, “and a week before I’m supposed to go back to Ann Arbor to school I get this call, out of the clear blue sky, and this guy says: ‘Hello? My name is John Tacha, and I’m the basketball coach at Concordia.’

“And I’m going, ‘What?'”

Turns out John’s friend had put him up to it. There was a new “chick” at the law firm, the guy had said, and John called seeking a blind date.

“And,” Deanell says, “I didn’t have anything better to do.”

Their first meeting?

“Wonderful,” she says. “We went out every single night that week.”

Deanell, now a U.S. Appeals Court judge, would go on to graduate and head to Washington, serve as a White House fellow and work at a law firm. John kept coaching ball in Kansas. Neither wanted to move.

Nearly four years after they first met, Deanell caved.

“Finally I decided, if I’m ever going to marry this guy I’ve got to go back to Kansas, because he’s NEVER going to come back to Washington,” Deanell said. “And so I sent him, in those days there were singing telegrams. And I sent him a telegram, in his high school math class that said:

“YES, SEPTEMBER 2. LOVE ALWAYS, DEANELL”

They married that specific Sunday afternoon, in 1973, in Scandia.

Lee Beth and Mike Dever

Mayor Mike Dever met his future wife at work. That was back in 1988 at Hall-Kimbrell, a Lawrence-based firm specializing in asbestos abatement.

“She was needing somebody to help with marketing our services and speaking at events — she was the event planner — and we kind of started working together and traveling together,” Dever remembers. “I had no aspirations. She was out of my league. But one thing led to another and we started seeing each other.

“Of course, our close proximity on these road trips helped speed along the relationship.”

The engagement came after Dever had moved to Indianapolis. He’d left Hall-Kimbrell and found himself banished from Lawrence.

“I got sued,” Dever said. “I was violating a non-compete agreement, so I had to leave town. I had to move a 200-mile radius outside of any city where we had an office, and Indianapolis was on the radar, so that’s where I moved to.

“I wanted to be with her, but I didn’t think it was right to ask someone to move unless there was a commitment. And so I flew back, and on the plane back I told the flight attendant at the time that I was getting engaged. … So they loaded me up with several of those airplane-sized bottles of champagne, and I took Lee Beth out to Clinton Lake and had her walk down a trail and asked her to marry me.

“She had no idea. Normally people don’t hike down the horse trail to the water to ask someone to marry them.”

Not with tiny bottles of champagne, anyway.

The Devers married in 1991, in Bella Vista, Ark.

Cindy and Bill Self

Bill Self was playing basketball for Oklahoma State University. Cindy was a cheerleader.

“After our loss to KU in 1984, the cheer and pep squad went to the Mad Hatter,” Cindy says, of the place that used to be on New Hampshire Street in downtown Lawrence. “Bill and I had never been formally introduced, but after we met that night I knew he was someone I wanted to get to know better.”

“We went home to Oklahoma City, and Bill called me and asked me to go out on a real date. I remember the first time he called the house. My mom was pretty shocked that it was ‘Bill Self, the basketball player’ on the phone, and so was I, for that matter.

“We began dating from that point on.”

The Selfs married Aug. 12, 1988.