In a small town in Belgium in the winter of 1967, a love story so real and so true it could rival any Taylor Swift song came into being.

French teacher Joelle Torreele met her current husband, John Torreele, in January of 1967 when she was a freshman in high school. Joelle attended an all-girls school in southern Belgium, while John’s parents were posted in Germany but had decided to send him to an all-boys French-speaking boarding school in Belgium. The couple crossed paths only through Sophocles and his inspirational play, “Electra.”

“They had one big theater production in these schools,” said Joelle, “and we needed the boys.”

The two schools came together to hold the play, in which Joelle was cast as the title character. Though he was just an extra, John quickly caught Joelle’s eye.

“I thought he was very handsome,” said Joelle.

Their budding romance was sadly not to be, because John’s parents were given a new assignment that would send them to America shortly after. John was given a choice: he could stay and go to college in Belgium, or he could go abroad and take classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. John eventually decided to study at MIT to help his career.

“The first year that he left,” said Joelle, “I thought I’d never see him again.”

Despite Joelle’s fears, they kept up a correspondence and sent letters to each other every day, sometimes keeping up many different threads of letters at once. To Joelle, the letters were like a diary that she has preserved to this day. In total, they wrote 845 letters for the four and half years that they were apart.

 A few years into his absence, before a major math test, Joelle received a letter that would change her life; John had asked her to marry him.

Though she was ecstatic, Joelle waited to respond, for she felt she was unable to formulate an appropriate response to such an important, life-altering question. Eventually, she managed to properly put her thoughts into writing and agreed to marry him.

In 1971, the couple said their vows and have been happily married ever since. Now, almost 40 years later, their love is still going strong. Joelle even admits to rereading the letters every once and a while, when she finds time. The letter in which John asked her to marry him has been reread at least ten to fifteen times.

“When you put something in writing,” said Joelle, “you know it’s going to last.”