A Facebook Love Story

Enlarge Image Image Gallery As a young girl attending junior high school, I would wrap my arms around the waist of a handsome young boy with sparkling eyes as he drove me home on his Cushman motor scooter. Diana Duncan

Two weeks after our first Internet meeting, Charles and I were married.

Well, it wasn’t our first meeting, but it was our first meeting since Facebook reunited us after 60 years.

Facebook love story: Our history

As a young girl attending junior high school, I would wrap my arms around the waist of a handsome young boy with sparkling eyes as he drove me home on his Cushman motor scooter. This happened because Charles would see me walking home from school, and he would stop to offer me a lift.

I had a schoolgirl crush on him at the time. The crush gradually dissipated, and then lay dormant after we both went our separate ways and lived different lives.

Our “separate ways,” it turned out, weren’t that far apart. We both stayed near Dallas, but our paths never crossed. It was not meant to be — not yet anyway.

I was married for 42 years and had one daughter. Charles was married for 45 years and had five children.

I worked as an assistant to the owner of a dinnerware and giftware company, and Charles went into broadcasting, mostly as an award-winning investigative reporter with ABC-TV affiliates in Wichita and Dallas. I would periodically see him reporting a story on TV, and I was proud of his success.

Found love on Facebook: A couple reunited

The years passed, and both of us lost our spouses. I’d been widowed for 14 years, and Charles was a widower for seven, when, while surfing the Internet one evening, I came upon a name that took me back to my younger years in Hillsboro, Texas.

Although we had lived very different lives, I’d never forgotten him. Even so, when my granddaughter insisted I send him a message, I hesitated. What if he didn’t remember me?

After a little more urging, I contacted him — and he did remember me.

As we corresponded on Facebook and in daily telephone conversations, we discovered that our lives had been remarkably parallel. The similarities in experiences contributed to the quick growth of our newfound relationship, and we communicated as if we were sitting in a room together. Our talks ranged from shared memories of our younger years to our children and late spouses, to our careers and our current lives as single senior citizens. We have been pleasantly surprised by the compatibility we’ve had from the exchange of our first Facebook messages to now, the second year of our Facebook love story.

We’re just like millions of others who have found love on the Internet, only we’re decades older than most of them. We got our second chance at love, and we’re looking forward to many more years together.

Diana
Garland, Texas

Read more inspiring do-over stories by CAPPER’s readers in Stories About Second Chances.