The most sweeping love stories often spring from the humblest of first impressions. Such was the case when Maddie Gilliam Stojanovic first laid eyes on her future husband, Dusan – nicknamed Dusan by his mother – at the time Dusan was a member of the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith basketball team.
“I saw Dusan when I was in high school,” Maddie says. “I went to a UAFS basketball game when I was still at Greenwood High School and the first time I saw him he was walking out of the tunnel to country music. Every other guy on the basketball team had a rock or rap song and here comes Dusan. He even had a cowboy hat.
“He comes walking out of the tunnel with this hat on and he grabs the coach’s daughter and twirls her around and walks out like a cowboy. I think that would work on every other girl in Arkansas, but country music was just not my thing. All I could think was, ‘Who is this guy, and why is he walking out to country music?’”
As if that weren’t a dubious enough start, Dusan had similar misgivings later when Maddie enrolled at UAFS on a volleyball scholarship.
“Maddie, from my perspective, I knew of her when she was a freshman,” he says. “She was one of those girls who always had a boyfriend. It was the weirdest thing. I genuinely thought she was really pretty, but I never really tried even to talk to her because she always had a boyfriend.”
The couple finds such stories funny now, having got the last laugh in 2018 when they wed. Married life is still fresh enough to tinge their voices with that particular newlywed quality, all the more because they know how narrow the odds are that they should have ever found each other to begin with.
“I had every intention of moving back home [after college],” Dusan says. “As God would put it together, I had the opportunity to meet Maddie and really, that’s when everything changed for me. I knew this is where I wanted to stay and build my life and my future with her.”
Every successful love affair is a statistical longshot, the odds of which make probability experts’ heads spin and in Maddie and Dusan’s case even more so. Born on opposite sides of the Earth – she in Arkansas and he in Serbia – there’s little in their upbringing to think fate would allow them to ever cross paths, much less find in each other a soulmate.
“Our relationship really did happen according to God’s plan,” Maddie says.
On the other hand, as they are quick to tell you, having a romantic backstory straight out of a movie script is something of a family tradition. Take Maddie’s grandparents, for example, whose relationship was a product of the Vietnam War.
“My grandfather was formally trained in California as an interpreter,” Maddie says. “He had two deployments to Vietnam; on the first he met my grandmother and on the second they got married. The rest is history.”
Dusan’s mother and father met and fell in love in Serbia despite the misgivings of parents. The girl of affluence and the poor carpenter ultimately ended up running away in order to start and build their lives together.
“My grandmother still has the goodbye letter my mother wrote,” Dusan says.
The other common denominator in Maddie and Dusan’s story is athletics, in which they were both gifted and supremely competitive. Maddie discovered sports as a toddler and would play on the first state champion volleyball team in Greenwood High School history along with elite club teams. She’d also earn all-state honors in both volleyball and soccer, landing her three scholarship offers. Her choice of college proved a key element to her eventually meeting the love of her life.
“Looking back, at that time I always said I wanted to leave and go to the east or west coast,” she says. “I actually fell in love with the school there in Fort Smith. It’s the reason I’m still here and it’s where I met Dusan.”
Dusan was a natural on the basketball court, pushed to his best by his older brother Djordje.
“I really looked up to my brother in a lot of different ways,” he says. “He started playing basketball when he was about seven years old. I was five and not really old enough to play, but I kept bugging my dad to take me to his practices. At first, I’d just hang out and play on the bleachers until practice was over but eventually the coach said to my dad, ‘Why don’t you bring him over too?’ and my dad agreed.”
Unlike Maddie, who liked to mix it up in several sports, Dusan was laser focused on playing basketball. He got good enough that wherever Djordje played, his little brother generally followed, until one day Djordje took a step that left Dusan behind in a big way.
“Eventually my brother had the opportunity to come to the United States to the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith on a basketball scholarship,” Dusan says. “That was really hard on me when I was still in high school. Two years later, I ended up at Fort Smith, too.”
By 2016, when both were on campus and moving in the same circles as collegiate athletes, Maddie and Dusan’s life orbits finally aligned. It happened under typically, untypical circumstances for the couple.
“In 2016, Dusan is just a few weeks from graduation,” Maddie says. “He’d torn his ACL and he got medically redshirted and decided with another year he might as well get a double major. He was just staying around to play another year; if he hadn’t torn his ACL, I would have never met him.
“Anyway, we had a mutual friend who was a volleyball player from Brazil. She was having a birthday get-together and she invited all her friends. At that birthday dinner in downtown Fort Smith, I talked to Dusan for the first time.”
“Knowing she was never single, I first wanted to test the waters,” Dusan says. “Once I found out she was actually single at that time, I was like, ‘I just have to go for it and talk to her and ask her out because I’ll never get that opportunity again.’”
From that first conversation the couple grew inseparable, as each took the time to learn the other’s unique story, immersed in the subtleties of their respective cultures and communities. It’s a process that continues to this day, helped along by personal experience.
Maddie first traveled to Europe and met Dusan’s family in 2017 and then the couple returned for an extended visit earlier this year, a makeup trip from 2020. For his part, Dusan likes to spend time with Maddie’s grandmother to compare notes on the challenges of being a first-generation immigrant.
In so doing, both have learned how to keep time with the rhythms of their respective clans while still dancing to their own music as a couple.
“The GDP in Serbia isn’t very high, so people look out for each other and take care of each other,” Dusan says. “I only have one sibling, but I have about seventeen cousins. We have a really tight-knit big family. So, I pride myself on being a good team player. I want to be successful, but I’m definitely more laid back while Maddie is very, very driven. I love that about her – how she loves to push for change.”
“Dusan has taught me so much about the culture in Serbia and how they maximize their love and time with family. Those are the things they place their value in,” Maddie says. “I have the same love for my family, but I’ve gained a new perspective as to what I value. It’s made me question, ‘What is winning? What is success?’ and he’s shown me a whole new way to look at that. Of everything I’ve ever accomplished, Dusan is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
