Long-Lost Loves Reunite 38 Years Later

Aug. 14 -- When Sharon Galbraith was dating Fred Inns in high school back in 1965, she remembers being head over heels in love with him. He recalls falling in love at first sight.

But Galbraith's mother — with some input from the family pastor — put an end to the young love affair. She decided that her 16-year-old daughter was far too young to be serious with a boy, and insisted they stop seeing each other. Inns, who was 18, reluctantly honored the request, a decision that he would later painfully regret.

"She was it. She was my girl right from the start," Inns said on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. "What attracted me I guess my heart."

Galbraith said she felt the same about Inns from the very start. "He made my heart happy, too," Galbraith said. "He was just a wonderful guy. He had good character, and I just fell in love with him," she said.

But Inns tried to put his feelings aside when Galbraith's mother ordered the young couple to end their relationship. Inns and Galbraith reluctantly allowed their relationship to fizzle out, and after graduating from Newport Harbor High School in Costa Mesa, Calif., Inns was drafted into the Army.

Now, 38 years later, after two marriages that ended and six children between them, Galbraith, 54, and Inns, 56, are not just back together. They are husband and wife.

Still My Girl

It was a long road, though. After Inns was drafted into the Army during Vietnam, he still wrote to Galbraith, and his feelings were unchanged.

"I carried a torch for her and I carried her picture as I traveled," Inns said. "I didn't know how she felt about me."

But then Inns received a letter from one of his friends back home, claiming that he was dating Galbraith. Though he found out much later that it was not true, Inns believed it, and felt crushed. He decided to let his "girl" go ahead and be happy with someone else.

Galbraith eventually moved on and married another man and raised two children. She divorced in 1986. Each time she returned to her childhood home, her thoughts went back to Inns.