'Sweetheart to everybody' finally admits she's the one
'You just don't want to mess up a good friendship'
By Anita Houk
July 25, 2004

With a friendship so precious, it's a wonder Lonnesha Bivens and Cliff Dewayne Wilkins ever married.

"I wasn't going to try to cross the friendship barrier," says Lonnesha, 29.
As for Cliff, 31: "I was scared to mess up a good friendship."

So these two single folks just talked, joked, shopped together, discussed their families - each has a son born in September, just a year apart (his Kavius is 8; her Khylan, 7) - and counseled each other about folks they were dating. (Twice Lonnesha tried to fix him up with friends.)
Cliff even helped Lonnesha choose and move into a new house. But enough is enough.

"I feel like his dad kinda turned on the lightbulb in his head," offers Lonnesha.

"Yeah, he did," Cliff admits. "She dropped something off for me, and after she left" - Cliff imitates his father's firm queries - " 'Dewayne, why you not dating her? That's what you said you wanted: She's a friend, she's beautiful, she has a good job. What's the problem?' "

Cliff and Lonnesha met in early 2000. He was a Memphis firefighter/paramedic, working out of the station at College and McLemore. She was a freshly graduated registered nurse, working the night shift in a local emergency room. "We would just see each other in passing whenever he would come up to the hospital, and we would talk a little."

"I'm a comedian," Cliff says, "so I like to make her laugh. . . . I used to always mess with her, say, 'Ah, you gonna be my wife one day!' I was joking."

Yet, he never said it to any other woman. When he went public with the tease - "That's gonna be my wife: right there," he said at her work - "I was extremely outdone," says Lonnesha. "My eyes got all big because he had all these people looking at me like, 'Oh, for real?' We were not even dating!

"He's genuinely charming," she explains, "just a sweetheart to everybody . . . That's what finally drew me into even developing a true friendship with him.

"It's a popular belief that a lot of the ER nurses are married to firemen and police officers," she adds. "I refused to fit into the statistic. 'No, I'm not dating a fireman.' And look at me today!"

Son Khylan deftly inserts: "Cliff is the best man for my mama." Why? "Because he's a good father to me and he's a good husband to my mama. He helps me with my homework sometimes. He helps her . . .."

And what does Kylan do for Cliff? "Be his son," Kylan says, grinning.
"That," says his mom, "was something I wanted . . ., someone who had a child and knew what that entailed."

Cliff and Lonnesha come from big families. "Matter of fact," says Cliff, "our families is how I proposed to her."

They didn't date long. She'd gone to Houston to see about relocating, and Cliff kept calling. He realized he didn't want her to move.

When she got back, she 'fessed up, too: She missed him.

They admitted their deep feelings. That done, they finally had a real date.
Last Thanksgiving, with about 50 folks on hand - his family, her family, their friends - Cliff snuck in with a cake shaped like a ring box, with a big ring on top.

Before parents and aunties and everybody, Cliff announced, " 'I love you and I want to be in your life for the rest of our life together. Will you marry me?'

"Well, about 15 minutes later, I finally go an answer. Somebody was crying."

She cried at the proposal and cried at the wedding May 29 at Woodland Hills.

"After hurts and failed relationships," says Lonnesha, "you just don't "
"want to mess up a good friendship," Cliff finishes.

"But obviously," she adds, "there are powers amongst us - and I finally gave in."

"She succumbed to me!"