so she bowed to her husband’s choice for their daughter. “I wanted her to be a Kelly,” she admits. “I let him spell it, too, otherwise it would have been Carrie.” The uncommon spelling was occasionally frustrating for Cari. When she was a young girl, she was somewhat “upset when she couldn’t find her name on a barrette or a bracelet in a store. When she started working and had to wear a nametag, her name always looked like Carl, because it would be spelled out in caps. She even got a letter once addressed to Carl Farvere! She really wasn’t pleased with that!” Despite the unusual spelling, Cari liked being named after a famous singer. The singing Carrie was from Des Moines, Iowa, the same city where the young Farver family lived for a while before relocating to Lincoln, Nebraska.
Denny would eventually earn a good living as an insurance actuary, but finances were tight early on. “Dennis worked two jobs, and I went back to work when Cari was nine months old.” Nancy was an excellent secretary, detail oriented, efficient, and always cheerful. Denny was a little old-fashioned and didn’t like the fact his wife worked, but she enjoyed her job, and they needed her income. “Otherwise we couldn’t make ends meet.”
With the shine of the romance worn off, they realized that they had little in common, and neither was happy in the marriage. Adam was almost four, and Cari eighteen months old when their parents divorced in the spring of 1976. Though it wasn’t always easy because sometimes they lived in different cities, Denny and Nancy worked together to make sure their kids felt loved and spent quality time with each of them. Little Adam craved time with his father, and Nancy missed her son terribly during the long periods she lived apart from him, but it was only fair that Denny, a dedicated dad, got an equal role as a parent. Cari was so young when her parents split that she naturally gravitated more toward her mother, but when she got older, she visited her father often, and they formed a strong bond. Nancy was glad about that. “Denny was a very good father,” she remarks. “He was great with kids, and his kids looked up to him. He always had time for them.”
By the summer of 1979, Nancy had been a single mother for three years, and it had been almost a decade since she and Mark had split up. When they discovered they had both been invited to a friend’s wedding in Macedonia, they were excited about seeing each other. Though Mark had had his share of girlfriends, he’d never forgotten his first love and was pleased to learn she was unattached. Nancy took extra care getting ready for the wedding and looked stunning in a white skirt with a sleeveless brown blouse. “It was August, so I had a good tan,” she remembers, adding that both she and Cari had always tanned easily. When Nancy’s gaze locked with Mark’s at the reception, it was immediately clear the attraction was still strong. He asked her out, and the next evening they went to the quarry. It was a hot night, with a bright moon reflected in the calm, black lake. The water was deliciously cool after a scorching day, and they slipped in for a swim. It was romantic and also fun. The first friends and first loves were thrilled to be back together, and it felt right. Mark could still make Nancy laugh, and he was even funnier than she remembered.
Neither of their mothers, however, was enthusiastic about their reunion. Nancy suspects that Betty felt she was too shy for her gregarious son. As for Luanne, she was worried that her divorced daughter was moving too fast. Both mothers were glad to be proven wrong when they saw how happy their kids were. Nancy and Mark were married in a magical outdoor ceremony in the quarry in 1981, at the tail end of the “hippie” era. Cari made an adorable flower girl, in a summer dress trimmed with gingham. Nancy was lovely in a gauzy, off-white ensemble with a flowing skirt as she and Mark faced each other and exchanged vows. Nearly forty years have passed since that summer swim in the moonlight, and they have been together ever since.
Mark was a teacher and good with kids, and Nancy’s children took to him instantly. He taught drama and art but realized that his days