Hugh and Melba Matthews met at First Baptist Austin in 1947
while both students at UT. They
were fast friends, and dated until she left for a job with the Baptist Sunday
School Board in Nashville, Tennessee in January of 1948. Their romance continued long-distance
until Melba met Paul, a handsome Tennessean later that Spring. Both Melba and Paul felt a calling into
ministry work and were married by Dr. Marney in December of 1948. Together they had three daughters and
moved all over for Paul’s various jobs as a church musician, earning him the
nickname, “The Traveling Troubador.”
After Hugh’s wife passed away in 1976, a mutual college
friend mentioned to him that Melba was currently single and living in Athens,
Georgia.
“This is a voice out of your past,” he said into the phone
and the rest is history.
Melba will never forget that call. For the next few months, they traveled
back and forth from Texas to Georgia visiting one another along with many, many
phone calls. One day, Hugh
declared, “We should either break up or get married because this is costing too
much.”
Hugh and Melba Matthews joined their families on July 7,
1977, two months before Mebla’s daughter’s wedding. That September, she and her
younger daughter caravanned to Texas for the start of school and football
season for Hugh’s son. Melba
laughed that not only did she inherit a son and a daughter but a live-in mother-in-law as well.
The Matthews have been married for 37 years and currently
reside at the Summit in Westlake if you would like to pay them a visit and hear
more about life, love, the law and just how things work out, when you let them.
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