Too big of a coincidence

It's mentioned in passing that Ray was born in Star City but hadn't been back there in 20 years.

Looking at the whole story in retrospect, you can see what the screenwriters were thinking: they don't want to reveal that Fantasia is from Star City (and has a connection to Dale) until midway through the film, but they need to have the two LA detectives come to Arkansas much earlier.

So they initially make it seem that Ray is the one with the connection to Star City. Early on, from a viewer's perspective, it seems that Ray's uncle will be pretty important: he has a scene where he seems deaf, and clueless about his nephew being a wanted criminal, but is that just an act? Then that character (the uncle) is discussed in a couple of other scenes between Dale and the LA detectives; he's first mentioned in that conference call with the LA Chief of Police, they tell Dale not to tip off the uncle, and then later in Dale's backyard (the barbecue) Dale says, see, I knew that guy was nothing to worry about, and Dud replies, that's just how it always happens, you get *beep* by the person you least suspect. So at that point, in the audience, we are expecting that uncle to show up again in a later scene. But the plot moves on to other characters, and it turns out the uncle really was not of any significance to the story of the three wanted criminals.

We are never told how Ray and Fantasia met and became lovers. It presumably was not in Star City, because Ray left there when Lila was a toddler. And it's hard to imagine that they belonged to some club in LA for Arkansas expats!

Maybe they had a mutual acquaintance, and that person said, "what, you're from Star City? I know someone else from there, wow that's weird, I'll have to introduce you!". In other words it's not a complete coincidence that Ray and Fantasia are both from the same town in Arkansas even though they didn't know each other there; the fact that they were from that town is why they were introduced by that mutual acquaintance.