BY JE’DON HOLLOWAY-TALLEY | Special to the Birmingham Times

RODNEY & KATINA TURNER

Live: Clay

Married: June 28, 2014

Met: September 2008, at Miles College in Pearson Hall, the campus music building. Katina, then a sophomore, was a work study student in the piano lab, and one day Rodney, who was a freshman, was jamming on a piano.

“I was trying to close down, and he was holding me up. I started [hollering] at him trying to get his attention and he just kept on playing on the piano, jamming with his headphones in,” Katina said.

“And finally, I looked up, and I saw her pointing her finger at me like I was in trouble, and I moved my headphones, and she said ‘Hey lil boy, it’s time to go’, Rodney said. “And I played for the choir too [which Katina sang in the soprano section], and I saw her again…”

“I didn’t say anything to him then, but we kept running into each other because he was always in there [the piano lab] playing the piano,” Katina said. “And [we have a mutual friend named] Dre, and he would always tell me ‘Rodney like you, he don’t even like your friend’. But I wasn’t looking at him like that, because I had a boyfriend and my best friend, Miracle, did like him… But one day after choir rehearsal, [Dre] said, ‘let’s go to CiCi’s Pizza [on Green Springs Highway], and that’s when we had our first real conversation… I still had a boyfriend at the time, so we were just friends.”

“I basically held on strong for a while,” Rodney said.

Eventually, Katina broke up with her boyfriend and hadn’t seen or talked to Rodney for a while. But during Christmas break 2009, Katina called their friend, Dre and asked for Rodney’s phone number.

“She was all the way in Memphis, Tennessee thinking about me and gave me a call out of the blue,” Rodney said. The pair talked over the break and when they got back to campus went on their first date.

First date: February 2010, at King Buffet in Midfield. “That was the go-to Chinese spot for everybody,” Rodney said. “I picked her up after she got done with her classes and we just hung out and talked … and then we went to the dollar movie [theater] in Hoover. We pretty much spent the whole day together.”

Katina remembered having a good evening. “We just laughed the whole night and talked about school and class…”

The pair began hanging out “every day, all day”, and Katina began accompanying Rodney to his rehearsals and playing gigs at churches around town.

The turn: Two weeks later, in February 2010. Rodney called Katina and told her they needed to make it official.

“We had just started spending so much time together, and I grew up in a holiness church, and we took dating seriously … you can’t just be courting for no reason,” Rodney said. “And I was thinking that I had been trying to lock her down for a while, and now was the perfect opportunity to go on and call it a relationship. So I called her and said, “Tina, we been hanging out a lot, and I like you and I know you like me, so why don’t we go on and make it official?’ And like we always do, we both busted out laughing.”

“I’ll never forget the day after he asked me to be his girlfriend… We avoided each other for a whole day and then ran right into each other at the end of the night at choir rehearsal,” Katina said. “I was trying to play it off (we both were) and we were like ‘I ain’t seen you all day, how ya been?’.”

The pair got the jitters out of the way and have been inseparable ever since. “We only broke up one time in our relationship and that only lasted an hour,” Katina laughed. “We called each other back and apologized and got right back together.”

The proposal: On Katina’s birthday, June 16, 2011, at her apartment on Green Springs Highway, Rodney took her to J. Alexander’s in Hoover, for a birthday date, and to the dollar movie theater afterwards. Rodney had planned to propose when they got back to her place.

“We got in [from the date] and Katina went to the bathroom, and I got straight down on one knee. And when she walked out, she started laughing when she saw me and said I knew you was about to do this… and I told her ‘I don’t have a ring yet, but I want to make this happen, and I’m gonna get you one. Will you marry me?’, and she said ‘yes’.”

Katina said she knew it was coming because she was newly saved, and they had been talking about marriage. “He basically introduced me to holiness. He witnessed to me, and brought me into the church… He played the piano at different churches and I was always with him and God started working on my heart … so at that time, I was really coming into my walk with God and started attending Woodland Park AOH [Apostolic Overcoming Holiness] Church [in the Green Springs area], and my pastor always saw us together and started asking him what were his intentions with me … we were both feeling conviction and started talking about getting married so I knew it was coming, and I was happy to say ‘yes,’” Katina said.

The wedding: The Worship Center Christian Church, at the Derby location, officiated by Pastor Dwight Kimbrough, of Woodland Park AOH [Apostolic Overcoming Holiness] Church. Their colors were teal, cream, and brown.

Most memorable for the bride was her father’s emotions while giving her away. “My daddy actually cried the whole time. And when he got me to the altar and he handed me over to my husband, he didn’t want to walk away, he just stood there,” Katina said. “And Pastor Kimbrough was like, ‘Sir, you have to go sit down now’, and he cried walking away.”

Most memorable for the groom was realizing at the end of the night that the whole day was a blur. But one memory that did stick was saluting his bride. “We’re both shy, and I was nervous, but when it came time to salute the bride, I came at her like I was going to tongue kiss her and she was like ‘don’t be trying to kiss me like that, my daddy sitting right here’,” Rodney said. “And also seeing how happy her daddy was to give her away to me. He was crying like a baby coming down the aisle with her, and it brought joy to my heart that he was so happy [with our union].”

They honeymooned in Orlando Florida, a gift from one of their friends. “We had a lot of fun. We had never been that far away together, and it was fun and relaxing getting to spend time and get to know each other as husband and wife,” said Katina.

Words of wisdom: “Being able to talk to your partner about how you feel. Being open and honest is the best advice I could give anybody. Rodney has gone through kidney failure, he was going through it for five years before receiving his kidney transplant. And the sickness part [vow] hit our marriage sooner than we thought and being there for him being his helpmate and getting each other through that taught us a lot about being patient. On the outside, he looked fine, but I didn’t understand how he felt so I had to have empathy for him and listen to how he said he felt, and keep myself in check …  It was a lot, he almost died three times, but God brought us through,” Katina said.

“One of the things I think is important that we had to understand in our marriage is that we’re both constantly changing. You’re going to forever be learning each other. The things Tina liked when we first got together are not things she likes now. Things we did when we first got together, we can’t do now. We got kids, and life and everything else is happening, so you have to find ways to reignite, and acknowledge each other as time goes on. If you don’t, you’ll end up being roommates and you don’t ever want that to be the case,” Rodney said. “You always want to have excitement in the marriage, and you have to be flexible too, because things change and so does your mindset.”

Happily ever after: The Turners attend Greater Emmanuel Temple Holiness Church in East Lake, where Katina serves as the Children’s Department president, and Rodney, who is a musician, plays the piano. They have two children: Paxton, 9, and Aniya, 7.

Katina, 37, is a Memphis Tenn. native, and moved to Birmingham in 2006 to attend Miles College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in music education, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham [UAB], where she obtained a master’s degree in elementary education. Katina works as a second-grade teacher at Legacy Prep Elementary in Forestdale.

Rodney, 36, is a Tarrant native, and Tarrant High School grad. He attended Miles College where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in music. Rodney works as a music director for The Star Church in East Lake and also plays at Rock City Church on Valleydale, and produced the hit gospel records: ‘Big’, ‘Guided’, ‘Impossible’ and many other Pastor Mike McClure Jr. songs.

“You Had Me at Hello’’ highlights married couples and the love that binds them. If you would like to be considered for a future “Hello’’ column, or know someone, please send nominations to Barnett Wright bwright@birminghamtimes.com. Include the couple’s name, contact number(s) and what makes their love story unique.