In the mid-1950s, Annette Adkins and Bob Harvey were sweethearts at Gar-Field High School in Woodbridge, Virginia.

“We went steady junior year of high school, 1955-56,” Annette recalls.

They went to prom together; danced to Johnny Mathis. The crooner and his hits “Chances Are,” and “The Twelfth of Never” became enduring touchstones between the teens.

Before the big dance, they posed for pictures together on a couch. It would be decades before either would see those photos.

“I thought I was in love,” Annette, a Pikeville, Kentucky native said.

Bob knew he was in love.

Annette said they met because it was decided she could get a better education in Woodbridge, where she went to live with an aunt and uncle while completing high school.

“She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in my life,” Bob said. “I fell madly, totally and one-hundred percent in love with her. We had a wonderful junior year.”

Then summer came, and Annette went on a Florida vacation with family. Her June departure, Bob said, broke his heart for the first time.

In Miami Beach, she met another young man she fell in love with, future husband John Callahan, whom she would marry in 1961.

Annette came back from summer break for her senior year of high school in Virginia.

She recalls, “Bob comes to me. I’m at my locker. He has his arms spread out for a hug, and I said, ‘Bob, I found someone else and I don’t want to date you anymore.'” She pauses as she recalls that day, adds, “I regret the harshness…”

“She broke my heart the second time then,” Bob said.

When she delivered the news, Bob recalls, “Nice guy I am, the Southern gentleman, I said, ‘alright.’” Annette remembers him walking away.

He soldiered on through senior year, a year of school he describes as “very lonely.” Sharing that same high school with Annette, there was no not seeing her, and thinking about what might have been.

Bob said, “Try to understand this one: I’m still madly in love…”

Graduation comes and goes; Annette and Bob go separate ways. That parting came 63 years ago.

Six decades? “That’s a long, long time,” as the lyrics to that special Johnny Mathis song go.

Next month, Annette and Bob, both age 80, will wed.

Separate lives

Over the next 63 years, Annette and Bob each enjoyed rich, fulfilling but very separate lives. Annette studied nursing at Jefferson Hospital School in Roanoke, Virginia, happily married John Callahan and raised a family.

Bob met the woman he would marry, Diane, whom he wed in 1959, and they too, raised a family and had a wonderful marriage. Bob worked variously as a law enforcement officer, educator and bailiff.

While each were happily married to another whom they loved, both Annette and Bob would think about each other.

In January 2015, Annette’s husband died. Bob also became a widower, when his wife lost her battle with cancer in 2017. Bob was her caretaker until the end.

Currently, Bob is fighting his own battle with cancer and his treatment is going well. A few months ago, he said, he took a trip.

About that time, he was thinking again of Annette, his high school sweetheart. “I wondered what our children would be like. A couple of months ago, she was heavy on my mind. I Googled her.” Bob found John’s obituary and realized Annette had been a widow for more than four years.

He said, “My heart fell on the floor.” He worried that during those four years, she might have found another; he feared that he “might have lost her again.”

Meanwhile, Annette was thinking of Bob. Those old photos, recently found on an undeveloped roll of film inside an old camera had made their way back to her: There they were, the happy couple, her in her prom dress and Bob in his suit. She says, “Those pictures made me think about Bob and to start a search.”

But it was Bob who found Annette first.

He made a donation to the care unit that took care of John Callahan during his last days. Then he found a condolence card and sent it to Annette. In that card, he included his phone number.

Eight days later, Annette left a message on Bob’s answering machine. “I danced around the room,” he says. “When she called, I couldn’t talk. I was still madly in love with this woman.”

She told him she’d been looking for him for a couple of years.

This was on a Friday, Bob recalls. They talked of meeting and she asked if he could come to Ohio.

Bob got here that Sunday.

“I left (Virginia) at five a.m.,” he says. “I drove 500 miles.”

He called her on the phone and she asked where he was.

Bob said, “I’m in your driveway.”

‘Like a Hallmark movie’

“The door opened instantly,” Bob said. “My heart was soaring. I had brought flowers.”

Annette: “He held my face in both his hands and he kissed me.”

It was, they say, “like 1956 all over again.”

“She said she had thought of me over the years,” Bob says. “I love her dearly. I love her more every day.”

“We just reconnected immediately,” Annette says.

They have since prayed together for their respective spouses’ blessings; serendipitous events and other signs, they say, assure them they have that blessing to wed next month: “There have been a number of things that have pointed that way,” they agree.

Their respective children and other family members also are very happy for Annette and Bob. Annette’s daughter described the couple’s reunion as being ‘Like a Hallmark movie.’”

Bob said he asked his son for advice on how to handle his first greeting of Annette and was urged to “plant a kiss on her like it was yesterday.”

And those flowers that Bob had brought Annette that day? Eventually, they took those same flowers to John Callahan’s grave.

October wedding

For their first date of the 21st Century, Bob wanted a 1950s-theme restaurant. They chose the Nutcracker in Pataskala with its décor that evokes a 1950s diner with jukeboxes, wrap-around padded booths and 1957 Chevy Bel Air decorating touches.

Annette remarked her husband John was not a dancer. The last man Annette danced with was Bob, at the prom in the mid-'50s.

“I think sometimes I can’t love her more, but then there’s tomorrow,” Bob says. He’s pledged to love her, as the Mathis tune goes, “until the Twelfth of Never, and that’s a long, long time.”

With the help of Annette’s daughter, Laura, Bob arranged to propose to Annette at Alum Creek beach a few weeks ago. The ring he chose for Annette is of 1950s vintage.

They plan a small private ceremony in October, followed by a reception at the Nutcracker. Bob then plans to make his home here in central Ohio.

Proudly displaying her engagement ring at the Nutcracker on Sept. 25 where they were planning their wedding reception menu, Annette said the 1950s-era ring and its various stones, “symbolize the past, present and the future and our journey together.”