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She let her mother think she was taking a degree at the University of Texas law school, but actually Oveta got herself a job at the capitol codifying banking laws for the State Banking Commission. Later, Oveta was appointed a clerk in the legislature's Judiciary Committee, and in 1925 was selected by the speaker of the house as legislative parliamentarian for the new session. She was not yet old enough to vote. She soon became such a knowledgeable expert on parliamentary procedure that she wrote a book on the subject.
In Austin, Oveta Culp grew to dark and serious young womanhood. She went to dances and basketball games with the rising young men of Austin (among her beaux: Silliman Evans, now a Nashville publisher, James Allred, who became governor of Texas (1935-38), but most of the time she was too busy for the flapperish goings-on of the day. Old Ike Culp took to carrying a long-bladed, switchback knife in his pocket, ostensibly to pare his nails, but word got around the legislature that he intended to use it on any young man who attempted to get smart around Oveta.
Between sessions of the legislature, Oveta lived in Houston with Florence Sterling, sister of Ross Sterling, an oil millionaire and soon-to-be governor of Texas. Through Miss Sterling, who had been a leading suffragette in her younger days, Oveta got an off-session job as secretary to the new Texas League of Women Voters (inevitably, she became president of the League in later years). In 1930 Oveta decided to run for the Texas House of Representatives, was roundly defeated by a rival who campaigned against her by thundering that Oveta was a "parliamentarian and a Unitarian." It was Oveta's only try for elective office, the only major defeat of her career.
In 1924 Ross Sterling bought the Houston Post-Dispatch (later the Post) and installed as president Will Hobby, a successful Beaumont publisher and one of the most popular governors Texas ever had. Oveta went to work as a clerk in the circulation department. Ike Culp and Hobby were old friends. After the death of Hobby's wife, Oveta and Will began to see each other after office hours. In 1931, when Oveta was 26, Hobby 53, they were married.
Elocution & Roses. At the time of the wedding, Ike Culp told his prospective son-in-law: "Will, she's going to embarrass you. She doesn't give a hang about clothes and doesn't dress up the way she should."
But Oveta knew her faults and her talents better than father Culp did. She ironed out her central-Texas drawl with elocution lessons, cultivated a taste for Modigliani, Bartok and yellow roses—as well as gowns by Valentina and Bergdorf Goodman hats.* She learned how to manage a vast (27-room), vaguely Georgian mansion. She learned about arcchitecture and decoration, collected antique silver. She acted in amateur theatricals, became a leader in social work, a Junior Leaguer, a patroness of the symphony.