Couple's message in a bottle travels 1,800 Miles for 13 years — and people have only 1 question

A romantic message tossed into the sea from the cliffs of Bell Island, Newfoundland, in 2012 has resurfaced on the southwest coast of Ireland, more than a decade later. The story, reported by Global News, follows a simple picnic turned lasting memory between two people who were then dating long distance. On July 7, 2025, Kate and Jon Gay were walking their dog along the Maharees Peninsula in southwest Ireland when they spotted a bottle lodged in the sand. 

At first, they joked it might be a message. Then they noticed the paper inside, but instead of opening it themselves, they brought it that evening to a meeting of their local conservation group. The bottle had to be broken open to retrieve the note. Inside was the now-yellowed letter from Anita and Brad Squires, dated September 14, 2012, along with a phone number. The group shared the find on Facebook, wondering aloud if the couple was still together, as per The Canadian Press. Within an hour, a woman named Martha Farrell from the Maharees Conservation Association received a text confirming that Brad and Anita were not only still together but they were now married with three children. 

They got married in 2016, and their family now includes two teenagers and a younger child. They recalled how they had been together for about a year when they visited Bell Island, a rugged stretch off the coast of Newfoundland. Brad was a rookie police officer stationed in British Columbia while Anita, a nursing student, lived in Newfoundland. That day, they brought a bottle of wine to their seaside picnic. After draining it, they decided to write a brief message and seal it inside. "Today we enjoyed dinner, this bottle of wine, and each other on the edge of the island," Anita wrote on a piece of lined paper. Brad then stood on the edge of a cliff and hurled the bottle toward the waters of Conception Bay. "I gave it everything I had," Brad later told reporters. 

"We didn’t see it hit the water. It was too high up... I just assumed it smashed on the rocks." But it didn’t. Thirteen years and 3,000 kilometers later, the bottle finally reached a shore. "It was unbelievable, because we didn’t know what had become of this very romantic couple," Farrell told Canadian Press. She added that since her conservation work focuses on coastal resilience and climate adaptation, the thought of this romance surviving felt just as significant. "We were wondering, is this love story resilient too?" she said. Brad reflected on how much had changed. "We were young in love and now we’re older in love," he said.

After the discovery, the Irish conservation group raised a toast to the couple. Back in Newfoundland, the Squires did the same, texting back and forth with Farrell and sharing in the unexpected reunion. "Anita and I both feel like we have new friends, and we’re all equally amazed. I guess we have some people to visit and a trip to probably plan," Brad said. Both the Maharees Conservation Association and the Squires will celebrate their 10th anniversaries next year. The discovery also adds another layer to the symbolic weight of bottled messages. In a qualitative study conducted in Chile, schoolchildren used "message-in-a-bottle" storytelling as a creative exercise to reflect on marine plastic litter. By imagining the journeys of discarded items that wash ashore, the students became more aware of the environmental impact of waste.