Love Story: Chrissy and Joe Lanzisera

Chrissy and Joe Lanzisera, formerly of Long Island, dated as teenagers before losing contact for many years. Chrissy tells how they reconnected.

Joe and I met in the summer of 1989 through mutual friends. He was 17, lived in Melville and went to Half Hollow Hills High School East. I was 15, lived in Deer Park and had just finished my sophomore year at Deer Park High School. We spent a lot of time together that summer and became good friends.

We were dating other people at the time, but when those relationships ended in 1990, Joe didn't wait long to ask me out. He took me to his senior prom that spring and we continued dating through the summer. We both love the beach and spent many days at Robert Moses State Park, on Fire Island or in the Hamptons, or we'd hang out with our friends at Friendly's on Deer Park Avenue. We had a great relationship.

Joe was leaving for college in upstate New York that fall. He suggested we date other people while he was away and I agreed. However, we wrote to each other and often talked on the phone. A month later, he decided to come down to Long Island to surprise me. After riding on a bus for six hours, he became very upset when I told him I couldn't see him that night because I had a date. We broke up and had no further contact with each other.

I went on to graduate from the University of Delaware. I was working in Manhattan and living on the Upper East Side when, on April 17, 2010, I received an email from Joe. It had been 20 years since we last saw each other. He said he had a difficult time finding me. He had searched for me on Facebook, but there were hundreds of users with my maiden name, Christine Carey. He then searched for our old friends and finally found one who had "friended" me.

Joe was also working in Manhattan and lived on the Lower East Side. Neither of us was in a committed relationship, so we arranged to meet for drinks. Being with each other again felt as if no time had passed since we were teenagers. There were so many fond memories of our summer together in 1990. We had a great time and soon we were exclusively dating. In February 2012 we got engaged, and on May 18, 2013, we were back on Long Island for our wedding at View in Oakdale.

We both feel we were meant to be together and are grateful for the 21st-century technology that helped us reunite and fall in love.

Joe is a broker in Manhattan with BGC, a financial services firm, and I am a CIS Project Specialist with the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan. We live in Manhattan.