Separated for More Than 35 Years, Couple Reunites Through Daughter
Daughter reunites high school sweetheart parents, rekindles decades-old love.
Oct. 17, 2008 — -- When Ann Lansing set out to find her biological mother, she had no idea her quest would end in reuniting two long-lost lovers.
Nearly four decades ago at a New Year's Eve party in 1967, 17-year-old Eileen Campbell first laid eyes on 19-year-old Jack Crowley.
"He was just the cutest guy ever," Campbell told "Good Morning America."
"He just had these twinkling eyes that did it. I was done."
Crowley felt the same way.
"We just hit it off," he said. "We were very comfortable with each other. I was taken."
The two fell in love, but several months into their relationship, Campbell became pregnant. The couple started making plans to marry, but her mother said she would not allow it.
"She said it would bring humiliation on the family," Campbell recalled. "And she said if I really loved the child, I would give her up for adoption."
After giving birth to a baby girl, Campbell placed her for adoption and, forced to separate from each other, the young couple moved on to new lives. Each had other children, but the pain of the past lingered.
"I have never forgotten," she said. "It was always there. I thought about both of them every day."
But then, in 2003, the child she gave up came looking for her -- Ann Lansing found her mother.
"I was married and thinking of having children," Lansing told "Good Morning America."
"I thought 'wouldn't it be a good time to search for my parents?' And with the advent of the Internet, it was amazingly easy."
Within a day of finding each other, Lansing and Campbell started talking.
"You do want to know why you were given up," Lansing told "Good Morning America."
"You do want to know why things didn't work out with your biological family, and hearing it from her, it was a sense of completion."
Soon after, mother and daughter decided to try and track down Campbell's long-lost love.
When they did, the fire of love that had been smoldering for years was reignited and the widowed Crowley and the divorced Campbell fell in love all over again. They were married this past July where their daughter performed the ceremony.
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