It's 1956 at the University of Louisiana. Gavin Grey and Babs Rogers are the "it" couple on campus. Gavin, nicknamed the Grey Ghost, is the star captain of the U of L football team, he who was the key player in last year's Sugar Bowl win and already voted All-American. Gavin realizes that his notoriety will only last as long as he continues to score touchdowns. Babs, self admitted as not being the brightest woman in the world, is a beauty queen who looks to be the next Miss Louisiana in the Miss America pageant. Beyond the pageant circuit, Babs' focus in life is Gavin and hopefully being a good housewife and mother. Over the next twenty-five years, their relationship, the love in which is never in question, goes through its ups and downs based on their changing personal fortunes and their changing views in light of their situation, especially as they deal with their respective fading stardoms and settle into what it truly means to be married. Babs finds out that she is a lot brighter than she gave herself credit. In and out of their life over that twenty-five years are: Donnie "Cake" McCaslin, Gavin's only slightly younger nephew, an academic who has his own idolization of the beauty queen; Ed Lawrence, Gavin's friend, U of L football colleague and eventual business partner who is hiding a problem from his friends, but one that is more evident to the outside world; Narvel Blue, who is as good a football player as Gavin but because he is black, doesn't have the opportunity or ultimately the desire to play pro ball, especially as the civil rights movement hits; and Bolling Kiely, a local businessman who wants whatever he can get out of the famous Grey Ghost.