40 Years And 40,000 Miles: Tinley Couple's Love Story Running Strong

TINLEY PARK, IL — Call it serendipity, call it a higher power—but just more than 40 years ago, Jamie and Lynn Parks somehow ended up at the same party neither one of them had planned to attend.

Both had heard about it last-minute. His friends had invited him over pizza. Her friend's boyfriend had bailed, and Lynn agreed to tag along.

"God put us together for a reason," Jamie Parks said. "That’s how we both ended up at the party."

The chance meeting—on May 18, 1985—sparked a decades-long love story that has endured tragedy, twists of fate and triumph. But even that seems too trite to describe the duo.

Their partnership has become known for powerhouse runner Jamie keeping Lynn with him over 40,000 miles, by pushing her in a wheelchair.

Races? 312. Marathons? 9. A power couple, of a different sort.

The two started running together on July 21, 1991, four years after Lynn was severely injured in a car crash. She suffered a traumatic brain injury and uses a wheelchair.

As Jamie continued running, Lynn wasn't a fan of watching from the sidelines. People clustered along the route would often block her view, Jamie said. Before the accident, she had always joined him on his runs, riding her bike alongside him. So why not now? He started training at running while pushing her.

She thought he was crazy, he remembers. But that was nothing new.

His idea stuck with them and on Sunday, May 18, they celebrated their 40th anniversary of meeting, and their 40,000th mile logged together.

Their History

Ask them both about that Crestwood party, and each will tell you a different story. But they were playing Uno, and they agree on that.

"... and you were cheating!" Lynn exclaimed to Patch.

"I was admiring how well she was playing!" Jamie retorted.

Later that night, their mutual friends somehow agreed that Jamie would take Lynn home. Jamie was from Orland Park at the time, Lynn lived in Flossmoor.

"I must have had a trusting look to me," he joked.

He drove her home. They went out again the next night.

"We haven’t gone 24 hours without seeing or talking to each other ever since that day," Jamie said.

The two had been dating just two years, and were five months out from their wedding, when the car in which Lynn was riding was struck by another at the intersection of 183rd and Harlem Avenue. She was comatose for 17 days and didn’t speak for five months. Jamie rarely left her side.

When she awoke and was able to communicate, she told him she'd only marry him if she could walk down the aisle.

"It took her seven years of physical therapy, hard work, to finally be able to be strong enough to stand and walk with assistance," Jamie previously told Patch. "Dad on one side, brother on the other, we were married in 1994."

They went on to have daughter Annalyn, who is now 25. Even that, Jamie said, seemed an act of God. The extent of Lynn's injuries following the crash was so severe, doctors had told advised against them trying for children.

"Physically, every bone from her shoulder to her pelvis on her right side was broken," Jamie said, adding that she had a slew of injuries to her organs and internally.

“'We’ll leave that up to God,'" he remembers them thinking.

Annalyn would serve as testament to their faith, joining them in their runs. First sitting on her mother's lap, and then running with them in the home stretch and across the finish line in the 2008 Boston Marathon.

Jamie has heard often from people over the years, asking if he thinks he'd be faster without pushing her.

"People have asked me that a lot of times," Jamie said. "Since Lynn and I started racing together in 1991, there’s only been two times I’ve done a race without her. Both times it was a relay with our daughter."

Their story is so remarkable, it was featured in a documentary called "Marathon Love." They've appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" (twice). They even carried the Olympic torch through Chicago en route to the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. They bought the torches for keepsakes (bet you didn't know someone could do that).

Lynn's resilience over the years has buoyed Jamie.

"We’ve known other people through networking who have TBI," he said. "None of them are the same—they’re like snowflakes. So many people get so frustrated, that they just give up. Lynn is totally the opposite. She keeps working hard every day. She’s accomplished so much that doctors never thought that she’d do after she got hurt."

Lynn is able to walk with some assistance, and continues to undergo physical therapy to regain some of what was lost through her injuries.

"I look at it is—I love a challenge, I’m always up for a challenge," Jamie said, of being by her side. "This has been an incredible challenge, none of us could have foreseen at any point in our life. Lynn is such a hard worker, she’s so determined at what she does.

"It’s really, when you look at all — what had to go into, all that falling into place for us to meet, the odds are incredibly against that. I just look at it, as it was meant to be. There’s no one in the world that I would have rather spent the last 40 years of my life with, than her."

Jamie now 63 and Lynn 62, they plan to run one more marathon—"because I'm not getting any younger," Jamie jokes.

Annalynn will join them, and their last marathon will be her first full one, Jamie said. The specific race will be her pick, he added.

Jamie and Lynn are also working on a book together, he said.

"I’m just riding my wife’s coattails, that’s what I’m doing," Jamie said.

"No matter how hard I train, she beats me every time. It’s really frustrating."