If ever there were a testament to the fact that The Bachelor franchise can be a conduit for true love, it would be found in Season 1 Bachelorette star Trista Sutter and husband Ryan Sutter’s love story.

The couple, who met on the hit reality TV series back in 2002, wed just about one year later, on December 6, 2003. Their love and devotion to one another has been the inspiration for many a Bachelor couple looking to make their meet-cute last, and in a heartfelt Instagram post Thursday, Trista showed how little her feelings for Ryan have faded with the passage of time.

“Do you ever hear a song and think that the write was speaking to you?” she captioned a throwback photo of the couple from the earlier days of their courtship. “Was speaking about you? Even if it is just a phrase or a line or a chorus?”

“Every time I hear @kelseabellerini sing the words: ‘We wrote our own story … full of blood, sweat, and heartbeats. We didn’t do it for the fame or the glory. We just did it for you and me,’ I know she must’ve watched 2 crazy kids fall in love on the first season of @bacheloretteabc … right, Kelsea?! Ha! A girl can dream,” she continued. “And 15 years ago, I was in a dream … my wedding day. A beautiful day with a beautiful man to start a beautiful life,” she wrote, thanking Ryan for “15 years … of blood, sweat, and heartbeats.”

She concluded, “Thank you for loving me for me … not fame or glory or just to ‘win’ that final rose. You and our family are the best part of our story and I can’t wait to see what the next 15 years brings and the 15 after that and the 15 after that.”

Ryan Sutter, a fire fighter and the recipient of Trista’s final rose on the inaugural Bachelorette, also took to Instagram to mark the special occasion. “In 15 years, we’ve been bad, ugly, but never indifferent,” he wrote. “No matter what, we’ve never stopped caring – about each other, our family or our lives together. I suppose that’s our secret?”

Trista, 46, and Ryan, 44, have long been known as one of the most stable couples in the Bachelor universe, and have tackled the ups and downs of life together as a team. Just last year, Trista suffered from a scary health scare in which she had a seizure while the couple was on a family trip in Croatia.

Ryan, who has worked as a firefighter for nearly 20 years, reflected upon their love in light of the life-threatening circumstances last year in an exclusive interview with The Knot.

“I’m at this point in my life where every day matter, and I’m thinking about what I’m going to leave behind,” he told us. “What’s my legacy going to be? I’m looking for new challenges, new adventures … Thinking all the way out to The Bachelorette when I went out on the limb— and it worked out for me.”

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