Finding love after friendship

Greer Parsons and Anne Green have 50 years of memories together. They attended Oakmont United Methodist Church in Homewood, lived in Patton Chapel in Hoover and now live in Cahaba Ridge Retirement Center in Vestavia Hills. But it wasn’t until July that they became husband and wife.

For the majority of the time the couple has known each other, it was just as friends — or friends of friends. Parsons was the best friend of Green’s husband, Ralph, and she was best friends with his wife, Yvonne. They each have three daughters, who grew up together, and remained close for the last half century. 

But after Ralph died two years ago, their relationship started to shift. 

“We bumped into each other at the grocery stores,” said Parsons, whose wife died 18 years ago, “and she said, ‘Call me.’”

Sitting across the table from Parsons, Green meets the comment with a laugh. 

“I did no such thing,” she said. “He had already been calling, about every two weeks or so, just to see how I was doing. We were already friends, not romantically, but we were friends, good friends.”

And while he would check in on her, Green said, it wasn’t until about eight months later that she reached out to him as a companion. She was lonely and said she was seeking a friend — not her kids and not just friends who were also widows.

“I called him up just for somebody to talk to, that was a peer, who was sharing my grief,” she said. “Because my husband was his best friend.”

They would go out to dinner a lot, in part because Green did not want to go out and eat alone and because neither of them cooked.

“It gradually grew from eating Jack’s hamburgers to Olive Garden,” Parsons said.

After they had started going out to eat together, Parsons’ daughters began encouraging him to move into a retirement home. They looked at several places and enlisted Green’s help before finding Cahaba Ridge Retirement Community.

Parsons started his stay at Cahaba Ridge sitting alone at meals and wanting to go home, said fellow resident Mary Jim Blackerby, and seeing him by himself would break her heart.

“I didn’t know that there was this dear friend who had been visiting him, who had been going through the sliding glass door,” Blackerby said. “I started questioning him, and he kept mentioning the same name over and over. I eventually said, ‘You love this woman named Anne.’”

Blackerby then enlisted the help of other residents, some of whom knew Green, and pushed Parsons to make sure he didn’t lose her.

“He said, ‘Yeah, but I’m blind and I’m crippled, and I wouldn’t do that to anybody,’” Blackerby said. “I had lost my husband, and I just hollered at him, ‘This is what women do. We just love taking care of somebody who needs us.’”

And while Green cared for Parsons, she said she knew they would need to get married.

“He had always said he wasn’t getting married again, so I was pretty much like, ‘You’ve got to marry me or I’m out of here,’” Green said. 

At first, she said, it looked like Parsons wasn’t going to come around, and she said she wanted the chance to meet someone else. Finally, Blackerby said, he “got with the program.”

“I realized to keep seeing Anne, I’d have to marry her,” Parsons said.

“That was the only way,” Green agreed. “Because I wanted to get married again. I wanted companionship. I wanted somebody. If it wasn’t going to be him, it’d have to be someone else.”

They got married in July at Cahaba Ridge, surrounded by family and friends. There wasn’t a big proposal, but they both decided marriage was the best next step, Green said.

“We get along really well,” she said. “We’ve been married six weeks with no fusses. I guess the easiest thing is I’ve known him for so long. I know his past. He doesn’t have any secrets.”

Not that Parsons expected his new wife to know all about his past. Some of those stories, he said, were just told to his best friend.

“My buddy Ralph, her husband, I’d tell him everything. Then he turned around and goes and tells Anne,” he said, turning to face Green at the table. “I didn’t know he was telling you all my secrets.”

They now live in a two-bedroom apartment at Cahaba Ridge.

“She’s been a mighty good wife,” Parsons said.