Tinley Park couple mark 40,000 miles of running together, one in a wheelchair
Jamie Parks wasn't all that interested in attending a party hosted by a friend of a friend in Crestwood 40 years ago.
He was invited at the last minute.
'I wasn't much of a party guy,' he recalled. 'But I said, 'I've got nothing to do. I'll go.'''
Lynn McGovern didn't have that party on her radar, either. But she had a friend who was going and the friend's boyfriend backed out at the last minute and McGovern volunteered to go with her.
That party was on May 18, 1985.
What followed was a wild love story with plenty of ups and downs.
They met. They fell in love. They planned on getting married.
Lynn was involved in a car accident that left her head and body a wreck. They married seven years later. Jamie, a fanatic runner who has logged every mile he has run, pushed her in a wheelchair during races and training during hot, cold, windy and snowy weather over the decades on a daily basis.
This past Sunday, a sunny day in the 60s, they not only celebrated the 40th anniversary of the day they met but they ran a mile in their Tinley Park neighborhood to mark the 40,000th mile they ran/rode together.
Their 25-year-old daughter, Annalyn, came in from the Portland, Oregon area, to help celebrate the occasion while Frankfort's Jean Reppa and Homewood's Bryan Angone, of the local Yankee Running Club, were also on hand.
The Parks' story did not make the Hallmark Channel, but a documentary, 'Marathon Love' was filmed about their lives and shown on the Discovery Health channel in 2008 and, occasionally, it gets shown somewhere in the world.
'I'll get an email from someone in Scandinavia or Australia from someone who saw the documentary,' Jamie said. 'It's funny — I don't promote it but it still gets shown.'
Last year, the Parks were interviewed for a TV news segment in Japan.
All this would not have happened if not for the chance meeting between Jamie, who lived in Orland Park at the time, and Lynn, who lived in Flossmoor, at the Crestwood party.
'God put us together for a reason, I guess,' Jamie said after Sunday's run.
Lynn remembers the meeting.
'We were playing UNO and he kept hanging around me,' Lynn said.
'She claimed I was staring at her cards, but I was enjoying how well she played,' Jamie said. 'We were getting along and having a good time.'
But Lynn's friend wanted to leave, and Jamie was asked to take Lynn home when they were through.
'If someone did that with my daughter — I would kill him,' Jamie said. 'But they trusted me enough. We didn't kiss that night, but we were engaged within two months.'
The car accident in 1987 changed their lives and wedding plans but not their love for each other.
'There was never a thought of us not being together — even after the worst part of her accident and the recovery,' Jamie said. 'She was in a coma for a long time after the accident and she couldn't communicate for seven months.'
Lynn told Jamie that if he didn't want to stick around, he was free to break off the relationship. Many men might have taken the opportunity to leave at that point, but Jamie would not hear of it.
'I told her that God put us together for a reason and I'm not going to mess with that,' he said. 'He knows better than I do what I need.'
Jamie is 63 and Lynn is 62. 'Our love has gotten stronger' over the years,' Lynn said.
They have been involved in 312 races including nine marathons including four Chicago Marathons and three Boston Marathons.
Annalyn has done some running with her parents and the three hope to do a marathon together.
Meanwhile, the Parks' friends admire what they have done.
'There should have been 40,000 people here celebrating,' Reppa said. 'This is such a special story.'
'They are extraordinary,' Angone said.
Annalyn was interviewed by the Chicago Tribune when she was 9 and said her parents were 'pretty cool.'
Now at 25, she used the same phrase and added that they are inspiring parents.
'They've accomplished a lot, not only in my life but in their own lives,' she said. 'To seen them run every single day and to do what they do … my dad was a mailman and it was insane that he would walk all of those miles and end the day running 10 more miles.
'It's inspiring.'
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