Woman finds ex-boyfriend on Facebook after 27 years — gives their love story the end it deserves

There are too many memories attached when it comes to our first love. Finding yourself blowing in somebody else’s wind and smiling eye to eye with flushed cheeks, for the very first time, holds a charm no other feeling can ever replace. Very few are lucky enough to end up with their first love — Aimee Snyder being one of them. Newsweek shared her story, where she reconnected with her former boyfriend from 27 years ago and rewrote their love story’s conclusion.

Aimee Snyder, a middle-aged woman living in Louisville, Kentucky, is one of the rare people who ended up with her first love. One random day, she found herself surfing through her Facebook account to search for a few people she had lost touch with while growing up. "I was feeling a bit nostalgic and searching Facebook for people I knew. I found a girl who went to the same church I had as a kid," Snyder told Newsweek. Followed by that, she came across the guy they had fought over in 1989, her first boyfriend — Chuck.

"We had met at church and knew each other for years before we started dating," she said. "I don't think I even registered on his radar until he accidentally knocked me out with a volleyball. He jumped up to power spike the volleyball, and I decided to try to intercept it, but took one step too far and intercepted it with my face." After seeing Snyder’s nose bleed profusely, Chuck headed towards the basement where she was cleaning herself. He accidentally saw her barely clad and apologized for barging in — they felt sparks fly, which were soon to blow up in their faces.

"We started hanging out all the time. He drew me pictures and wrote me letters. He'd drive to my school and come work out in the gym afterwards," Snyder said. They started dating, but the Church was not accepting of their love. "They wanted him for the face of their youth group and didn't want me in the picture because I'm a feminist like my mother before me," she added. "The church leaders put pressure on our families to separate us." But despite the resistance, they never quite left each other.

At a sudden point in their relationship, Chuck was involved in a car accident, which left him in a coma for 3 days. "I was the first person he recognized when he came out of it. That kind of put me on the outs with his mom. The parents decided to step between us. We tried circumventing them, but it escalated,” she said. “We fell out of touch not long after that," she continued, "My parents and I had a fallout. I ended up a homeless emancipated teenager living in my car. Shortly afterwards, I got relocated to Florida, and I lost him completely." According to an article by The Washington Post, psychologist Jefferson Singer said that many people have a “memory bump” between the ages 15–26. “They recall more memories, and they tend to be more positive memories,” he said. It’s not only because we experience so many “firsts” during this age, but also because, after the fact, “we have more opportunity to rehearse it and replay it, rethink it, reimagine it, re-experience it.” He added, “I also think it becomes, to some degree, a template. It becomes what we measure everything else against.”

With her memories of love as palpable as ever, 27 years later, Snyder found Chuck on Facebook and did not think twice before texting him. It took him months to reply to her text, for he was insecure about his lost hair and changed appearance; Snyder was insecure about her weight gain as well. "We hit it off like those lost years never happened," Snyder said. "After months of chatting, I flew up to Michigan to see him in person. He packed up his life and flew back to Florida with me. We've been together ever since."

According to the outlet, on February 22, 2022, Aimee and Chuck got hitched at Philippe Park, at a prehistoric temple mound in Safety Harbor. "He proposed by sticking a wedding veil on my head and taking a picture of me at a thrift shop when we were out shopping, just to 'see how I looked' as a bride. Later that day, he asked my stepdad if he could have my hand. It was so endearingly old-fashioned," Snyder said.

She gave him the most nostalgic wedding gift, "a custom-printed volleyball with that first date photo that says, 'You had me at first Voit,' which was the brand name of the volleyball that was printed backwards across my forehead the first time he noticed me." Snyder believes that being apart all those years was important for their relationship. "I don't think the timing was right the first time. We both had a lot of maturing to do," she said. Their adorable photos were posted by u/Ravenwolven1 on Reddit.