NATCHEZ — Isla Rosalie Hoyle met her namesake Saturday.

Isla Rosalie, 4 months, was given her middle name after the antebellum house on which the Great Mississippi River Balloon Race festival is located.

Her parents, Brian and Mandy Hoyle are the owners of hot-air balloon Big Red that is a regular at the festival. So when it came time to name their first-born, Rosalie was an obvious choice.

“I think the middle name was picked before the first name,” Mandy said. “It was a done deal.”

Mandy, born in Natchez and raised in McComb, began coming to the Natchez balloon races in 1991 with her dad Steve Jones.

Jones, of Brookhaven, was a crew member for a hot-air balloon and Mandy tagged along to help.

“He got the balloon bug here in Natchez,” Mandy said of her father. Jones is now the pilot for the Budweiser balloon.

Mandy said the Natchez balloon festival became a can’t miss event, even when she moved away for college at Ole Miss and for work in North Carolina.

But Mandy’s family isn’t the only thing that keeps the Hoyle family making the 900-mile journey from their home in Raleigh, N.C.

It is also where Mandy and Brian’s relationship really took shape.

Mandy, a journalist for The Triangle Business Journal in Raleigh, and Brian, a marketing manager for Eye Chain Associates in North Carolina, met at a business social. Brian said he was immediately taken by Mandy, but Mandy needed a little more convincing.

“I think I asked her on a date about 12 times,” Brian said. “She kept saying ‘no’ because she thought I just wanted an article.

“Finally I stopped asking and just told her.”

That turned out to be lucky for Mandy and Brian.

Early on in their dating relationship in 2004, Brian was telling Mandy a few of the things he hoped to accomplish in his life.

“I told her I really wanted to fly in a hot-air balloon again,” he said. “I flew once many years before that and wanted to get up again and maybe get my license to fly.”

It was then that Mandy chimed in and told Brian her dad was a hot-air balloon pilot and would be flying in the Natchez balloon races that were just a few months away.

“I said ‘Done, we are going,’” Brian said.

During the trip, Brian got the chance to fly again and, sharing the basket with Mandy, the couple floated over the festival grounds.

“On that flight with her, with Rosalie in the background, I knew she was it,” Brian said. “It was just a beautiful sight.”

Not only did that trip to Natchez cement his feelings for Mandy, it also pushed Brian to take the necessary steps to get his hot-air balloon pilot’s license.

In the next year, Brian, with Mandy by his side, completed his pilot training and came back to Natchez for the 2005 Great Mississippi River Balloon Festival.

It was during that festival that the Hoyles took two big steps.

First they completed the purchase of their balloon “Big Red,” a former Budweiser ballon.

And second, they got engaged.

“I was going to propose to her at the gazebo, but there were too many people around and it just didn’t’ feel right,” Brian said. “So I did it at the hunting camp she grew up going to in Monterey.”

Mandy said yes and the couple married the next year in Raleigh.

And while their home and professional lives are in North Carolina, a part of their heart is always in Natchez. For that reason, the Hoyles continue to come to Natchez.

“It is like a big homecoming for us,” Mandy said. “This time (Isla) gets to meet her great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother and it is her first trip to Mississippi.”

And, as might be suspected, Isla has already caught the ballooning bug. While she hasn’t left the ground yet — “I’d like for her to be standing up on her own before we got up,” Brian said — she has been an integral part of the balloon’s crew since she was three weeks old.

“There have been times that I’ve heard the crew on the radio say ‘Pass over that field you were going to land in. We’ve got to change a diaper,” Brian said.