Summer Camp Crushes Reunite Decades Later on Dating Site

— -- It was love at first sight for Evan and Kim Leach when they were teens at summer camp in the mid-1980s.

But it wasn’t until decades later, on Thanksgiving morning in 2013, that they reconnected on Match.com, sealing the fate of their camp crush. The happy couple married this March in Paris and still can’t believe their innocent romance, sparked during a bus ride home, led to happily-ever-after.

It turns out, they lived two miles away from each other and never knew it until they found each other online.

“It’s just a lot of craziness,” Evan, 43, told ABC News about how their relationship was rekindled. “What a small world. You never know who is going to enter your life at any point. I think everything in life happens for a reason. That’s been our philosophy with this whole thing. It’s surreal really.”

After failed marriages, Evan and Kim were both testing the waters on Match.com -- and both of their subscriptions were about to expire.

“I saw her and looked at her profile and was kind of intrigued. I had no idea who she was. This was 25 years later,” Evan recalled. “I sent her a wink to get her attention. She gets back to me and we started communicating a little bit.”

Kim’s username was something discreet, but Evan’s was simply ELeach, so she knew right away who he was.

“Oh, immediately,” she said. “It was one of those names that always stuck with me. I had these little googly eyes for him at camp. When I saw it I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I cannot believe it.’”

Their entire first date was spent catching up on old memories the two shared from their time at Blue Ridge Leaders’ Camp in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

“As soon I saw her in person, it started coming back to me,” said Evan. “As soon as she told me her maiden name, I knew. I remembered her. Our first date was spent completely talking about what a small world it was. Then we realized we had mutual friends and all the similarities that came out were just bizarre."

“We sat four rows apart from each other at South Florida football games," he continued. "We both had season tickets for years. We never knew it.”

The more they talked, the more they realized how their separate lives had so much in common.

“We lived a mile and a half or two miles from each other in South Tampa," Evan added. "We both loved USF football, both had been married and divorced about the same amount of time, both of us never had kids. There were so many things going on there.”

Friends of the lovebirds convinced them to share their amazing success story with Match.com.

“Someone suggested we share our success story with Match,” Evan said. “So Kim wrote Match and it was about a month before we heard back from them. They reached out to us and said they loved our story. The fact we were crushes when we were young, reuniting 25 years later on their site, and now we’ve just been having fun with it.”

The couple hopes their story can inspire others who feel like there’s nobody out there for them.

“For people that feel like there’s not any hope for them, like they don’t have a chance to find somebody or they’ve been online for a couple years and are not having any luck, I think our story eliminates that,” said Evan. “If there was ever hope, it would be our story. I truly think everything happens for a reason and there’s somebody out there for everybody. It may take a few extra years for some people, but if you stick with something, it’ll work out.”

For Evan and Kim, it took roughly 25 years before their YMCA summer camp love was able to blossom into marriage, but that’s what they adore so much about their unique tale.

“It was so innocent back then. You had a crush on somebody, it’s not like it went very far,” Kim recalled. “He asked if he could share my blanket on the way home. My eyes would follow him across camp. But that was so long ago. I was 14, he was 15, so you never say, ‘Well, I’m going to find him and marry that man.’ You’re so young and immature.”

Fortunately for these two, that’s exactly what happened, and they have advice for others who may have a long-lost camp crush out there.

“It ended up being such a cool story,” said Kim. “Don’t rule out online dating. He was so close to me for years, and it took an online dating site to connect. That’s what triggered it, his name. If it was just his picture and not his username, I never would have known who it was.”

The couple said they have no current plans for children, but if they do have any, maybe they'll send them to summer camp.