It’s the kind of love story you’d expect to see in a movie – a message in a bottle washes up on an English beach and leads to a love match.
But it actually happened to one Guelph couple.
In the early 1940s, Audrey Robinson was vacationing on the Isle of Wight.
The 14-years-old wrote a letter, put it in a bottle and threw it into the English Channel.
“Originally I figured it would be nice for it to get somewhere like France,” she says.
But it didn’t get far, washing up on a Portsmouth beach just across the strait from the Isle of Wight.
“My cousin and her mother were walking down the beach and saw this bottle,” recalls Pat Robinson. “They picked it up, opened it and read the note.”
They passed the letter to Pat.
“She’d written it in English and French, just asking for a pen pal and giving her address in Uxbridge, near London.”
The couple exchanged letters for awhile before finally meeting for the first time.
Pat, a young marine, was playing drums in a marching band.
“He was good-looking,” says Audrey. “He was wearing his uniform and he was very nice.”
The Robinsons tied the knot in 1951 and then moved to Canada in 1953.
They’ve now been together almost 70 years and share their memories with their 3 children, 8 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
The Robinsons now live full-time at The Village of Riverside Glen, a long-term care home in Guelph.
Their love story has been shared across social media and they’ve heard from people across the world.
“Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Wales, Scotland. A lot of them say: ‘Is this really true?’ I say: ‘Yes!’”
