Note: I want to give credit where it’s due on this post. My wonderful wife posted this on her Facebook page yesterday. It’s quite literally a sweet little story and I wanted to add a little love to the Internet today.

See this sweet old couple? And that sweet old candy? Believe it or not, there’s a connection.

Keith and I had been dating about three months back in June 1984. We were perfect for each other from Day One – peas and carrots, as they say. One Sunday afternoon we went for a drive in the country, out in Union County, S.C., just riding, laughing and talking.

We stopped to buy gas and a drink at a little country store. While there, we noticed the yellow wrapper with red letters – Mallo Cups! We had both eaten Mallo Cups as kids but the company had been sold in the late 1960s and it had been hard to find the chocolate-coconut-marshmallow candy. We were excited and bought two two-cup packages.

Back in the car, Keith ate his Mallo Cups with joy. I ate one of mine and saved the second one for later. Then I fell asleep.

When we got back to my house, I started to gather my things. I couldn’t find my Mallo Cup. “I’m sorry,” Keith said. “I ate it.”

Don’t you hate it when you save something really good to eat for later and somebody steals it out of the refrigerator? Such disappointment! But what could I do? The nearest Mallo Cup was almost an hour away.

Five nights later, on Friday night I cooked dinner for us and Keith said he’d bring dessert. He arrived with a paper bag in his hand. “I brought dessert,” he said. We both laughed because the last time he promised to bring dessert he arrived with apple fritters and orange sherbet, a quick find at the grocery store a few blocks from my house. I couldn’t imagine what could be in the bag this time.

Instead of putting the bag down, he said, “Let’s eat dessert now.”

He was pretty insistent so I opened the bag. Inside was a package of six individually wrapped Mallo Cups. He said he’d felt bad about eating my second cup on Sunday so he wanted to make amends.

I moved to open the package and he pointed to one of the cups. “Eat this one,” he said.

So I poked a knife into the package and pulled out the Mallo Cup he’d pointed to.

And inside the package, wrapped in tissue on top of the chocolate-coconut-marshmallow candy, was a diamond ring.

He’d driven all over creation to find that candy and he used an Exacto knife and clear tape to open the package and hide the ring and close it back.

That’s my Mallo Cup love story. Today we went for a Saturday drive – we sang, talked and laughed. And we split a Mallo Cup.