Ms Keefe would post the same photo every year in the hope of tracking down the six people pictured (Picture: Twitter)

A woman who spent 13 years trying to find a couple whose wedding photo she found in the rubble of 9/11 spoke of her joy when she finally got to speak to them – and they were alive and well.

Elizabeth Stringer Keefe felt determined to find the six people pictured in the crumpled photograph after a friend retrieved it from the wreckage of the World Trade Center and passed it on to her, asking her to ‘do something meaningful’ with it.

And after 13 years of posting the scanned photo online and making an appeal to get in touch, the assistant professor, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, finally got a response.

Attention wonderful world: ALL SIX PEOPLE ARE ALIVE AND WELL AND I HAVE JUST SPOKEN TO ONE OF THEM!!!!!!!!!!! #Happyending #911photo — E. Stringer Keefe (@ProfKeefe) September 12, 2014

The man in the back of the photo was identified as Fred Mahe, who had the photo on his desk on the 77th floor of one of the World Trade Center buildings when it collapsed in 2001.




And after more than 27,000 retweets, Ms Keefe was able to speak to Mr Mahe and his wife, who still live in New York.

‘It’s a beautiful, joyful moment captured in time and it was such a contrast to what I saw at Ground Zero, which was still burning when I was there,’ she told Mashable.