Two childhood sweethearts have found their way back into each others' arms after 60 years apart.
Not only have Jacqueline Van der Vlugt, 79, and Johan Van der Geest, 81, reunited after all this time, they have also had to travel to the other side of the world in order to do so.
Van der Geest and Van der Vlugt began dating when they were both teenagers and living in their hometown of Sassenheim, the Netherlands. Van der Geest then joined the army for compulsory military service and the pair broke up, following which he emigrated to New Zealand.
Each of them married and had their own families, and, last year, Van der Geest decided to try and track down his long-lost love. “I often thought about her, my first girlfriend. We were very much in love, so I put her name into Google and her phone number came up and I gave her a call,” he told Stuff.co.nz.
“We talked for an hour and then we kept in touch through Skype. Her husband had died and I was separated, so we were available,” he added.
The pair travelled to see each other several times, and are now very much back in love. “You can't compare when you're young and full of fire to when you're 80 and you slow down a bit. It's a bit more good friends, but it's a romance, a love story,” Van der Geest added.
The couple have not yet decided whether to base themselves in the Netherlands or New Zealand.
RSS
