Pen pals of over six decades cement their friendship with emotional first meeting in their late 70s

In today's day and age, where communication has become fast-paced, it is all about texting and FaceTiming. Therefore, only a few people understand what it means to write letters to family and friends. Emily Conn and Brenda Stowe are among them. Both in their late 70s now, they've been writing letters to each other since they were paired as pen pals in middle school. Conn's daughter, Christina Schrecengost–who goes by @cschrec1 on Instagram–shared a heart-melting video of the first time the two friends met and people cannot get enough of it.

The video begins with Conn sitting on a chair with closed eyes. Stowe enters through a door and puts her hands over her pen pal's eyes from behind. Conn is unable to figure out who it is, hearing her friend's voice, and expresses, "I don't recognize the voice." However, Stowe continues to talk and ends her sentence by saying, "Bless your heart!" That's when Stowe realizes that it is Brenda and she turns around surprised and starts saying, "Oh my God! Oh my God!" Then, they both hug each other. They appear visibly emotional upon meeting each other for the first time. The text overlay read, "Meeting face to face for the first time after being pen pals for over 60 years."

The post was captioned, "Assigned as pen pals in middle school to help learn to write in cursive, they remain close friends over 60 years later. But, on September 15, they finally got to meet face-to-face." People in the comments loved the meeting of the two friends. @jawknee commented, "The fact that she didn’t know her voice but knew it was her from her phrases in letters warms my heart." @pyrogallion shared, "Brenda is my Nana! 'Bless your heart' is basically her catchphrase." @encap_creations wrote, "The fact they actually stayed in touch for that many years regardless of what they went through in life but also never reached out digitally? So sweet and wholesome. Oh, the anticipation of getting a letter in the mail." @audreythevampireslayer said, "The excitement in her voice when she says her name. I can’t. I’m crying." 

Conn hails from Pennslyvania and Stowe from Georgia. Schrecengost was the one who helped the two pen pals to meet. The two friends initially used to write weekly or monthly letters about their lives. Conn told TODAY, "I mean, we were really young, so we weren't into much discussion about anything serious." She shared that they would talk about school, their grades and how the weather was. But eventually, over the years, they started to talk on the phone and talked about "all of the things." "We talked about jobs and home and weather and, you know, how we were feeling," Conn said. She went on to share that they have been there for each other during tough times, including recent times.

Conn was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer. "Brenda had breast cancer at one time, I had it also, and that kind of drew us even closer," she recalled. "And then this time in my life, the cancer came back, and it metastasized to a different area... it's not that we dwell on the cancer part. We just keep a positive attitude and do our very best to uplift each other and everyone around us and to stay positive," the woman said. She called their friendship "a blessing" and said they are happy that they got to hear each other's voices and talk one-on-one. Other than phone calls, the duo used to write letters to each other but never wrote emails, texted or did Zoom calls. Stowe said about their first meeting, "I feel much closer to her because I put my arms around her and I hugged, and we both, we cried together, and it just, I just think it made our friendship even stronger."

You can follow Christina Schrencengost (@cschrec1) on Instagram for more content on her family life.