Liz Curtis first saw Bill Higgs across a crowded room. She, a popular WHAS radio personality, was scheduled to introduce singer and pianist Twila Paris in concert that night. He also was a radio employee, from WLXM.
Though the look was the standard beginning of a romance, it was simply the spark of the story that the Louisville couple eventually would write together.
“We really met at a wedding not long after the concert. Mutual friends were getting married, and I went to the wedding as a single woman—always a challenge,” Liz explains. “People expect you to come, be happy and bring a gift. That’s asking a lot when you are not dating and not having any prospects.”
Bill chimes in with his side of the story.
“I knew Liz by reputation long before I met her,” he says. He recounts in his sure, measured voice how he used to tell folks that he married the woman he saw from a billboard. WHAS advertised a promotion that featured Liz holding a flamingo. “That’s another story, though.”
With a laugh, Liz takes us back to the sanctuary where the couple met “for real.”
“At this wedding, a few rows behind me was this handsome man I vaguely recognized. So, I felt emboldened to go back. He, too, was by himself. I thought that was a good sign. He was smiling at me. I thought that was a very good sign,” she says. “I introduced myself and said, ‘Welcome.’ Eight months later, I said, ‘I do’ for real.”
Sprinkled with good-natured humor and a refreshing honesty about their strengths and weaknesses, their voices combine into a solid narrative that spans the past 32 years. Despite their similarities of a radio background and literary gifts, the couple recounts the many differences in their lives.
Different, Together
Liz is a northern transplant to Kentucky. Originally hailing from Pennsylvania, this small-town girl has traveled the states, “up and down the radio dial,” as she puts it, even doing shows on the same station as famous shock jock talk show personality Howard Stern. She eventually settled in Kentucky.
“By the fall of 1981, I found myself in Louisville, Kentucky, playing oldies at an AM station and playing dangerous games with marijuana, speed, cocaine, alcohol and a promiscuous lifestyle. I’m one of those people who had to fall all the way down to the bottom of the pit, until I had nowhere else to look but up,” Liz writes in her devotional book Rise and Shine: Encouragement to Start Your Day (2002).
In classical plot lines, there comes a point in the action when the main character makes a decision from which, once it’s acted upon, there is no going back. Literature teachers call this a climax, and it is a perfect description of what happened to Liz on Feb. 21, 1982. From her lowest point in life, Liz did look up—all the way up—professing her complete faith in Jesus. It was a turning point that forever changed the story of her life.
In the meantime, Bill grew up in Nicholasville, the son of the son of a storyteller. He earned degrees in social work and religion from Georgetown College, and a Master of Divinity degree and doctorate from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. By 1982, he was well into the beginnings of a broadcast career.
Liz’s laughter again fills the air when she says, “He is incredibly intelligent. It took me 18 years of three colleges to get my bachelor’s.”
They banter with their words, speaking of likes and dislikes, quirks and familiarities. They tell of the routine, which is a daily adventure only because they choose to look at it, and live it, as such. They exchange nouns—marriage, faith, work—with common ground experience, each filling in details without correction or judgment. Bill speaks of Liz; Liz speaks of Bill. Their words carry strong tones of respect and mutual admiration. More words fly through the air—adjectives that make the two halves of the couple distinct, yet complementary.
Liz is the youngest of six children. Bill is an only child.
Liz is a closet introvert, preferring a quiet corner away from the spotlight, despite a prolific speaking career. Bill works any room with practiced ease.
Liz is a “neatnik.” Bill is … not.
Liz has a well-established platform of writing and speaking. Bill is content to stay in the background and help manage his wife’s engagements.
Liz has published 37 books, taking an average of 100 writing days for each book, spread over six months to complete a first draft. Bill published his first book in 2016, nearly 30 years after he started it.
Liz must have quiet to write. Bill can handle some background noise.
Liz writes fiction and nonfiction primarily for women. Bill writes literary fiction primarily for men.
“Occasionally, someone would ask me, ‘Why don’t you and Liz write a book together?’ Well, it would be a catastrophe,” Bill explains. “As you can see, our writing styles are very different. Different is good. That’s the way we live our life around here.”
Liz continues the story, her words turning the dog-eared pages of a well-loved tale spun between the two of them.
“Bill has this beautiful left brain, and I am right-brained. Together, we do really well,” she says. “Over the years, I have become more of a student, and Bill has become creative. After you’ve been married long enough, you begin to try on the other side and find out there is room for expansion.”
Even though there are ample differences in their lives, they both believe they are together for a reason bigger than just the two of them.
Better, Together
“From the first real date when we went out to dinner, and Bill brought me to the door and shook my hand like a gentleman would, I went in and called one of my dearest friends and said, ‘I have just met the man of my prayers, but if he never calls me again, I am OK,’ ” Liz recalls.
These seem like strange words coming from a single, older woman who would go on to write several romances, but for Liz, they were true because of her faith.
“Though the thought of having Bill Higgs in my life was amazing; bottom line was that I was already loved, already protected, cherished—all the things that a woman wants to be. If I also got to spend my days with Bill, well, that would be amazing,” she says. “I just knew I was content. I already had that relationship [with Jesus] so central to my life. It was a lovely place to be.”
Bill echoes that sentiment, comfortably picking up the narrative of confident living where each finds his or her worth in God, without a hint of boastfulness.
“I’ve always maintained that a marriage should create an entity that is bigger than the two individual participants,” he says. “In other words, Bill and Liz ought to be something more than Bill by himself or Liz by herself. I think we’ve managed to accomplish that on some level.”
It’s a feat they have achieved since 1995, when Bill began working with Liz at their Laughing Heart Farm.
Liz set up her writing loft in the office building directly behind their house. Bill managed Liz’s schedule, keeping her speaking engagements confined to the weekends, so they could take turns caring for their children, Matthew and Lillian.
Liz’s fiction and nonfiction generally focus on relationships—the relationships between people, and the relationship between people and God. While managing schedules and children and the general duties of life, Bill penned his own narrative concerning relationships in his literary debut: Eden Hill. The story, set in the early 1960s, is one of generational and social division and unity. The fictional community faces sorrows and joys and is confronted by one of the most famous Biblical parables: The Good Samaritan and what to do with the challenge of being neighborly.
“There is a little bit of an ideal about the town, but I think there is some grit as well. It reflects who we are, and I think we are going to strive to be better than we are now,” Bill says. “This has been something of the character of Kentucky. Kentuckians have been known to be there for each other, and we have lost a little of that over the years. If we can recover a little bit of that, well, so much the better.”
Even though they are better together, Liz put distance between herself and Bill’s literary endeavor.
“I did not fling open one door, name one connection. I did not read the book until it was entirely done and edited, and just about ready to go to typeset,” Liz says. “I knew the joy of watching that gift from God. To be published is a gift, and in Bill’s place, I really wanted him to have that joy, satisfaction and sense of calling. and to have it happen without me touching anything. It’s so important.”
Doug Jackson
Simply Together
Until the sequel to Eden Hill comes out, or until Liz’s next book or speaking engagement, the couple focuses on being a living story of faith, love and growth.
“You write a book, first of all, to explore your own heart. God always wants to show you something,” Liz says. “There is something you need to learn, a way you need to grow, a new experience that you need to make first. God is always showing me things—not always pretty things, sometimes very hard things, but that is how we grow. We don’t grow on the mountains; we grow in the valleys.”
For this writing Kentucky couple, no matter the terrain or the adventure set before them, they will finish the story strong and sure, writing every single word as if it were their best.