Sixty-year-old Angela Rustamova still cannot forget that day in 1975. She was a teenager, thinking of her beau, Vagif, an ethnic Azerbaijani from Georgia, and counting the days until he would visit her in her hometown of Alaverdi, Armenia.

When he finally came, Vagif Rustamov, then a 32-year-old barber, proposed. He promised 18-year-old Angela “a real life” together.

Despite pressure from their families and others, they had one. Their love story continued for 42 years.

Remembering her youth, Rustamova says she never would have imagined that she could fall in love with an Azerbaijani. She had learned too much about the two nations’ past differences she says. “In the shops, street and other public places, I was always arguing with Azerbaijanis visiting Armenia because I was too young,” she continues.

But all that changed when she came across Vagif Rustamov in the Alaverdi bazaar, a place where ethnic Azerbaijanis from Georgiawould often come to shop.

In her husband’s village of Sadakhlo, a predominantly ethnic Azerbaijani settlement in Georgia not far from the present-day Armenian border, the couple learned each other's language and came to accept each other’s religion. They celebrated both Novruz, the Azerbaijani holiday which marks the start of spring, and Nakhatsenendyan Toner, the Armenian Apostolic Church’s Christmas Eve.