Alumni Brian and Amanda Knox have been married a whopping two months. Just a couple weeks after the University homecoming, the two graduates were wed in the First United Methodist Church in Commerce, even though neither is from the town. But Commerce is where their Alma Mater is, and the church itself is located right across the street from where the two first met. At least that’s what Brian says. -

It was the President’s Cookout before the start of the fall semester, 1998. Brian Knox (B.S. Journalism, 2000) remembers clearly that he was sitting on the ground on the West Lawn eating a hot dog
when Amanda Seigler

(B.S. Sociology, 1999) approached him and a friend. She was passing out fliers to let new students know about the services offered by a local Christian organization.

Unlike Brian, Amanda would say later she had no recollection of the exchange. Little did she know that during their short meeting she was being permanently cast in Brian’s mind as “that black-haired chick from the Wesleyans.” Okay, maybe it’s not the most romantic tag a young man might settle on for the woman who would become the love of his life, but perhaps Brian can be forgiven. He is, after all, a journalist. You know. One of those people who make a living being bluntly objective.

He makes up for it, though, in the contented, affectionate way he watches her as she tells the story of their courtship. Clearly this is a man in love. But Amanda says things started out much more platonically. Not to mention much more, for lack of an adequate existing word, poultry-cally.
“The Wesleyans were putting together Thanksgiving baskets for those students who were going to be stuck on campus for the holidays,” Amanda says. “We needed help, and somebody suggested we ask Brian.”

The Thanksgiving turkey project threw the two students together enough they had the chance to become fast friends. Which was just fine with Amanda. “I had made up my mind I didn’t want to date anymore until it was the right one,” she says. Anyway, just becoming friends seemed a pretty big leap for Brian, who Amanda says was “really, really shy.” At this she arches an eyebrow in his direction and remarks, “Though you wouldn’t know that now . . . I broke him of it.”

With his reserve and her reservations assuaged, they went on their first official date—to the Commerce emergency room. Brian, who was still listed on the national bone marrow registry following a relative’s illness, had been called to provide blood samples to determine whether he matched another recipient, and they went together for him to do so.

The day to deliver the Thanksgiving baskets came, and Brian and Amanda together saw to it that a dozen turkeys were delivered to students still on campus. Amanda was on her way home when she noticed a blood drive going on at another local church and decided to stop in and make a blood donation of her own. When she got home, she learned that her family needed her to cook a 20-pound turkey for their Thanksgiving gathering. The trouble was, she was too weak after giving blood to pick up the big bird, prepare it, and put it in the oven.

What does a damsel do when she’s got a large, nonmigratory game fowl to truss? She states it plainly: “I called Brian and asked if he’d come over and pick up my turkey.”

He did so gladly, she remembers, and—at least to Amanda’s way of thinking—his making a special trip to pick up a rather substantial slab of raw meat was pretty much all it took to elevate Brian to saint status. Which was good enough also to elevate him officially from friend to boyfriend.

Soon they were engaged, not long after they learned that when he first went off to school here, his mother had called Amanda’s Wesleyan group to ask that someone contact her son and perhaps get him involved in their activities. His mother didn’t know he had already had a memorable meeting with a young woman from the group, Brian says. “Mom didn’t know about Amanda, and she didn’t know that we were already on a collision course.”

Looking a little sheepish over his once again all-too-journalistic choice of words, Brian catches Amanda’s eye. But she just laughs. It’s easy to laugh with a friend, she says, and that’s what they’ve been since their beginning.

There’s little doubt theirs is a match made in heaven. After all, it all began when each gave blood, and their attraction was so powerful they unknowingly preempted even the well-meaning maneuvers of a mom.

Then they rendezvoused over turkeys and ultimately decided to date because of the bird—and when finally they get married, it’s on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. And the same cosmic forces must have followed them to their home in Bridgeport, Texas. Their street? Turkey Creek Trail.