Couple rekindle their teenage love 32 years later after reconnecting on Facebook

A couple have revealed how they have rekindled their teenage romance, following a 32 year gap apart, after rediscovering each other on social media via Facebook.

It was love at first sight when teenagers Dawn Gray, 15, and Lee Richards, 17, initially met on Southend Pier in July 1991.

Gray caught Richards' eye and when he called out to offer her one of his chips the pair got chatting.

Having swapped numbers, Richards' called Gray a few days later and started visiting her every weekend, the new relationship quickly turning into a summer romance.

But despite Gray admitting to falling in love with Richards she eventually bowed to pressure from her single pals and called things off.

Her teenage sweetheart was left heartbroken by the split, and though he says he often thought of calling at her parents' home over the years, the former couple went their separate ways with both going on to have other long-term relationships and starting families.

Fast forward more than three decades, however, and a newly separated Richards, now 49, decided to look up his former love via Facebook to see if there was still any hope.

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Having found her profile he sent her a message in January this year and within days they were chatting for hours on the phone, before meeting up just a few weeks later.

Now back together as a couple, Gray and Richards say they are just as keen on each other as they were when they met all those years ago as teenagers.

"It was meant to be," Gray, a teaching assistant from Rainham, Essex, says of their rekindled romance.

"We picked up again just like that – like time hadn't passed.

"When he arrived at my door after all that time we just stood laughing – it just felt like when we were young again.

"It will always feel like that with him."

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Describing the secrets of their relationship, Gray says they are able to talk about anything together.

"We just go from subject to subject, and we laugh so much," she explains.

"It's no problem if we don't have money to do anything, we're just happy to be together."

Recalling their relationship first time around, Gray says it was love at first sight from both sides.

"We felt so comfortable together right from the start," she says.

"We just started chatting and mucking about. That's what we do now too."

Richards, a window cleaner from Holt, Norfolk, also recalls an initial spark from their very first meeting: "When I saw her for the first time I knew there was something special about her, and she looked stunning.

Though they actually lived ten miles a part, they met on a day trip to Southend, hitting it off immediately and chatting for hours before Gray's parents came to find her.

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And Richards says those same feelings were still there when they met up more than three decades later.

"It honestly feels like we've never been apart," he says.

"When I saw her on the doorstep recently I just wanted to give her a huge kiss."

Having gone their separate ways after their break-up, Gray was married for ten years and had son Jack, 23, and daughter Ellie, 21.

After her divorce, she had another long-term partner, who is the father to her second daughter, Ruby, 11, but they separated in 2019.

Meanwhile Richards had been in a partnership for 28 years which ended in 2019. He was encouraged to put himself on social media by his daughters.

The first thing he did was look up his old flame on Facebook and send her a message.

They met on Gray's doorstep on February 17, and now spend every Friday to Monday together and chat for an hour every evening, and during their lunch breaks.

Both had been dating but hadn't clicked with anyone else.

"We were ready to be together," adds Gray.

"I've often thought about him over the years."

Richards also had a feeling it would be second time lucky for the couple: "I just knew it would be alright when I messaged her.

"The time was right."

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The couple aren't the only ones who have managed to rekindle a romance later in life.

Last year, a British woman who moved to the US to get over her childhood sweetheart shared how her plan didn’t work – when the duo reunited 24 years later and got married.

Amanda Piper, 49, split from first love, Jonathan, 52, when she was 18, after two years of dating.

But when the young couple broke up, Amanda relocated to Arizona, US, in 1991, to move on from the relationship and "try something different".

Having married in America and had three sons, when that relationship broke down her thoughts returned to her first love and then Jonathan – who was by then divorced and had a daughter – added Amanda as a friend on Facebook out of the blue in October 2015.

The pair began talking and all their old feelings came flooding back. They rekindled their love, before tying the knot in Las Vegas when he flew over to visit the following August.

Additional reporting SWNS.