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Building on an Orange Legacy Couple’s devotion to OSU spans decades By Terry Tush
longtime boyfriend, she agreed to a blind date with a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity at OSU.
Chuck and Kim Watson will celebrate 40 years of marriage in August 2012. Who knows how their lives — and the lives of many Oklahoma State University students — might have been different if not for the circumstances surrounding one fateful weekend in 1968.
That date, however, was not with Chuck Watson. Kim’s blind date to the OSU-sponsored Varsity Revue talent show was with Chuck’s pledge son in the Sigma Chi house — until fate intervened (or maybe it was the flu or a migraine headache; who really remembers now?).
Watson was an enthusiastic entrepreneurial spirit who made his way to OSU that year in hopes of playing basketball for legendary Cowboys Coach Henry P. Iba. He never got that opportunity because of a back injury (and, in his words, a serious lack of talent), electing instead to concentrate on his education, Sigma Chi and campus leadership activities. As the daughter of two diehard Oklahoma State wrestling fans, Kim Hogan knew she would end up in Stillwater. A senior at Ponca City, Okla., High School who had recently broken up with her
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engage@spears summer 2012
Watson did what any Sigma Chi would do: He stepped in for his pledge son at the last minute. Even though that meant showing up in his 1965 Chevrolet Impala unable to open the driver’s side door thanks to a recent accident. “It was the old Chevrolet Impala with bucket seats, so I had to climb over the bucket seats from the passenger side to get in. I’m surprised she even got in the car with me,” Watson says. Hogan not only got into the car but the two became best friends over the course of the next several years, and they were married in