Friend's emails go to junk despite being in contacts

That has happened to me before and I was able to use Mail Rules to manage it. You can set up Mail Rules for iPad and iPhone using on iCloud.com. See:

Use iCloud Mail rules to automatically apply actions to emails in Mail on iPad - Apple Support

You can enter your friend's name or email address and set the action to "move to Inbox." Works very well for me in these cases.

PS: On a Mac computer, Mail rules are set through Mail > Settings rather than using iCloud.com:

I get no indication that the email was considered junk

Then it is likely the "Trust junk mail headers in messages" setting in Mail Settings > Junk Mail where some email exchange is marking the message as Spam.

With one of the messages selected show all headers with View > Message > All Headers. Look for an X-Spam header.

You can uncheck the setting to stop it from moving the message.

The lack of indication that Mail marked it as junk can also mean your email provider is moving it to the junk folder before delivering to your Mac.

It's possible that either her email address, email domain or IP address has been flagged up as a source of junk mails by one of the junk mail filters that your mail ISP uses. You could try logging in to the web browser version of your email (if there is one) and see what junk filtering and/or whitelisting options you have

Roy Bradshaw wrote:

I get no indication that the email was considered junk

Which mail provider is being used here?

Shut down your mail clients (all of them), open webmail, and receive a test mail message. If the received mail still goes to junk, it’s the mail provider junk filtering, or whatever mail-processing rules are configured at the provider, not your mail clients.

Roy Bradshaw wrote:

my friends email to me often ends up in my junk for no apparent reason. Her address is in my contacts and frequently receive emails from me. Any ideas?

Which mail provider is being used here?

Usual is to shut down the mail client, open webmail, and receive a test message. If it still goes to junk, it’s the mail provider junk filtering, or whatever mail-processing rules are configured at the provider.

It may be that some email exchange has marked it with an X-Spam header. The default Junk Mail settings are to trust junk mail headers.

Do the messages have the banner that says “Mail thinks this is Junk?”

Thanks , but another friend says any replies he gets from this community also go into his junk box

Happens. It's likely not Apple. Some ISPs see a message from a forum and automatically classify it as coming from a "mail list," which ISP some auto-flag as junk and others block at the server lever. My old ISP would do the "mail list— route to junk" thing but the Rules fix solves that if it gets as far as your Junk folder. It did for me.

are there any other weird goings on?

Absolutely (😉) but this is not one I've heard. If it does, the mods have not shared it with any of us.