It may well have been on just such an occasion that Rinda Horton and Rev.
Thomas Houghton met and began their intimate friendship.
Rinda's only daughter, Lillie Houghton Ghormley, wrote that, "Even though
Thomas was several years older that Rinda, they became good friends and began a
romance.  Rinda's parents were not happy about the romance and refused to let her marry
the 'preacher'.  So Thomas decided to move to Oklahoma.  He was assigned to the
Methodist Church in Warner, Oklahoma in Feb 1907."
Rinda Horton's parents probably thought that this would be the end of her
romantic relationship with the 'preacher'.  But not so.  As her granddaughter, Marilyn
Nichols said, "Rinda clasped a secret to her heart".  She loved the Methodist minister and
intended to marry him.
Lillie Ghormley's description of the courtship continued: "The sweethearts
continued their friendship by letters.  Eventually, Thomas sent Rinda a ticket and money
for a trip to Warner.  He planned that they meet in St. Louis and marry there."
Unknown to her parents, Rinda was making plans to leave home and make the
long, perhaps frightening, journey to Oklahoma.  Her granddaughter said, "Having never
been out of Kentucky, Rinda's heart race in anxiety, but there was no turning back; she
obtained a one-way ticket for Muskogee, Oklahoma."  Apparently the parents suspected
nothing out of the ordinary when Rinda announced that she "Was going to visit a cousin
for a few days".
In order to prevent her parents from being suspicious, she wore two sets of
clothing and took only what would be considered necessary for a few days visit.  But
Rinda had made careful plans with the help of some friends.  Her granddaughter said,
"She walked to a neighbor's home where she had secretly sewn other clothing, and
packed them in a bag."  Picking up her bag, she headed for the railroad station.
I imagine Rinda boarded the train at either Wrigley or Morehead where she began
her westward trip to St. Louis.  But the best laid plans do not always work out, as Rinda
was to discover.
In the early 1900s, trains did not always run on the exact schedule and such was
the case with Rinda's train.  It arrived late in St. Louis and according to Lillie Ghormley,
Rev. Houghton thought she had not come and made his way back to Oklahoma.
Rinda was not deterred.  According to her granddaughter, "Rinda did not fail him. 
Showing the faith she had in him, she continued her trip to Oklahoma.  They were
reunited in Muskogee and married on Sept 4, 1908."
Mrs. Ghormley said that in Oklahoma at that time it was a custom to charivari
(shiverer) newly-wed couples, just as it was here in our own area.  Shortly after the
Houghtons had retired for the day, the serenade began outside, and if it was anything like
some I have heard of in this area, it was very loud and raucous.  But since one of the
newly-weds was a preacher, the revelers may have kept the serenade a bit subdued.  Lillie
said that her father had grown some large watermelons that summer and had taken one
into the house to cool.  She continued: "So when the group came to charivari the couple,
he pushed that watermelon onto the porch and went back to bed".
In describing her parent's marriage, Lillie said, "it was like a fairy-tale marriage
because they lived happily.  They never got angry or argued during the fifteen years they
lived together".
After their marriage, Thomas and Rinda continued to live in Warner for two
years, and it was there that their only child was born.  She was given the name Lillie Lee;
"Lillie" for her grandmother Horton; "Lee" for her grandfather, Richard Lee Horton.
In most of the organized denominations, pastors were frequently reassigned, and
the Methodist Church was not an exception.  Lillie Ghormeley said that her father's
moves "came more often that not".  "Through all of the moves, though, Rinda was patent,
always helping others, as well as caring for her family and assisting her husband in his
ministry.
Lillie mentioned that I one town where her father was pastoring, the mother of a
small infant came down with typhoid.  The family's doctor asked Rinda if she would take
the baby and care for it, a challenge she gladly accepted.  But eventually the mother
recovered and took the baby back home just before the young couple moved to Texas. 
The mother was young and inexperienced in motherhood, and within six months the
infant was dead.  Having become attached to the baby, it was a very sad day for Rinda
when she heard of its death.
In still another community, the Houghtons answered the call to help when a child
became ill with diphtheria, perhaps one of the most frightening and dreaded diseases of
that time.  Neighbors avoided contact with the family out of fear that they, too, might
contract the disease.  But not the Houghtons.  They carried food to the family, ran
errands, and sat with the sick child, even putting their own eight year old daughter at risk
to the extent that she was suspended form school for two weeks.  Lillie said, "Even
though the child died, Thomas and Rinda continued their daily ministering to the family".
And so it went as the Houghtons moved from one community to another.
Through the years the "Coy Maid from Kentucky" stood by her pastor husband,
teaching Sunday school classes, providing for quests in their home, and assisting Rev.
Houghton in his ministry to the community.  In Lillie's words: "Services such as these
went on all the time until Rev. Thomas R. Houghton died on May 24, 1923.  He was
buried at Walnut Grove, WV, where other members of his family were buried".
After the death of her husband, Rinda continued to live in Warner in the small
retirement home she and Thomas had built.  Both the Horton and Houghton families
offered Rinda help is she wanted to move back east, but she refused, preferring to remain
in Oklahoma.
When Lillie Lee graduated from high school in 1926, Rinda was determined that
she would attend college.   There being no institution of higher learning in Warner, Rinda
moved to Tahlequah so Lillie could continue her education.  While living in Tahlequah,
Rinda managed an apartment house to supplement her small pension and finance Lillie's
college expenses.