The picture that captured the unlikely friendship of Joe B. Hall and Denny Crum

Assigned by the Herald-Leader to photograph a 2004 Boys’ Sweet Sixteen opening-round contest between Covington Catholic and Carlisle County, David Stephenson looked into the stands at Rupp Arena and found a subject of keener interest.

Not only were Joe B. Hall and Denny Crum, fierce coaching antagonists in their days leading the men’s basketball programs at Kentucky and Louisville, sitting side-by-side, they appeared to be sharing a box of popcorn.

“I remember being shocked,” Stephenson recalled Wednesday. “I didn’t know they were friends, let alone friendly enough to share popcorn with each other. ... That shock is why I took the photo.”

The picture Stephenson captured, of Hall reaching over to get popcorn from the box being held by Crum, ran on the front page of the March 19, 2004, Lexington Herald-Leader.

Taken only three days after Hall and Crum had launched what would be a run of 10-plus years hosting a radio sports talk show together, the photo has become for many the lasting symbol of the unlikely friendship that formed between the two coaching rivals who in the 1970s and ‘80s had seemed to hold each other in such disdain.

On Tuesday, it was announced that Crum had died at age 86. Subsequently, the former Louisville head man’s Hall of Fame career, two NCAA championships (1980 and 1986) and six trips to the Final Four (1972, 1975, 1980, 1982, 1983 and 1986) have all been justly celebrated.

Crum’s generosity as a community benefactor, his enthusiastic embrace of Black basketball players at a time when that still met resistance in some quarters and his pivotal role in creating the environment that led to the annual UK-U of L men’s hoops series have also drawn justified praise.

Yet the aspect of Crum’s life that fascinates me was his late-in-life BFF relationship with Hall — who passed away on Jan. 19, 2022, at age 93. Growing up in Kentucky in the 1970s and early ‘80s, I thought the two coaches loathed each other.

“It seemed that way at the time,” says Oscar Combs, founder of The Cats’ Pause.

Back then, Hall was continuing what had been Adolph Rupp’s long-running policy of Kentucky not playing other in-state schools. Crum, who had left a spot on John Wooden’s coaching staff at UCLA to accept the U of L head coaching job, was challenging UK’s presumed hoops superiority.

Jim Lankster, who spent the 1980-81 season as an aide on Hall’s UK coaching staff, said “it was like (Louisville was) the enemy. We didn’t have much to say about them or to them.”

Ultimately, of course, the NCAA Tournament bracket finally forced Kentucky and Louisville to play. In the 1983 Mideast Region finals, Crum and U of L won an 80-68 overtime decision over Hall and UK. That finally broke the dam and launched the Wildcats-Cardinals yearly series that continues to this day.

Hall only coached two more seasons after the “Dream Game,” going 2-0 vs. Crum and Louisville in 1983-84 (the regular-season opener and an NCAA tourney round-of-16 meeting) and falling to the Cards in Freedom Hall in 1984-85. Crum coached at Louisville through 2000-2001, going 7-13 against Kentucky in the series for which he had advocated.

On the March day in 2004 when David Stephenson turned his camera toward Hall and Crum in Rupp Arena, the two coaches were three days into what would be a run of 10 years, seven months and two weeks hosting the “Joe B. and Denny Show.” The syndicated sports talk radio show was carried, at its height, on 21 stations around the commonwealth.

The ex-coaches were appearing in Rupp to promote their new show. That’s why Hall was decked out in a “Wildcat blue” blazer, while Crum was wearing a “Cardinal red” sport coat.

Because their shared radio show had just launched, the burgeoning friendship, boosted by their mutual love of hunting and fishing, between the one-time coaching rivals was not that well known to the public.

“I think for the vast majority of people, the reaction to seeing them together like that was the same as mine — surprise,” Stephenson says. “There were so many layers (to the picture). The colors of the jackets. The fact they were next to each other. Then you add the sharing of the popcorn, to me, that was what put it over the top.”

The picture captured the essence of what became a deep friendship between Hall and Crum.

“Joe had a genuine love for Denny,” says Lankster, who worked as the producer on the “Joe B. and Denny Show” in its latter years. “He just really liked him.”

Says Combs: “Denny and Joe were, I thought, since the middle of their 10-year run on radio, they were more like twin brothers than anything.”

Stephenson left the Herald-Leader in 2009 and is now an assistant professor in the University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media. He says he tells his students the goal of photojournalism is to capture images that connect with people so strongly that the picture stands the test of time.

“Those meaningful pictures that become somewhat iconic, they don’t come very often,” Stephenson says. “I’m sad that (Joe B. and Denny) are both gone. But I am really glad to have that picture.”