This teenage couple are reunited and remarried 39 years after this picture was taken

Love is often a bittersweet thing, and finding your life partner really is like finding the needle in the figurative haystack. There are so many impediments between the potential love of your life - it could be an age difference, your careers, the literal proximity between you, or simply a combination of bad luck and unfortunate circumstances. But anyone who's spent any time at all on the dating scene will know that sometimes, for whatever reason, things just don't work out, and very few of us ever get a second chance to reignite the same spark after it sputters out the first time.

That what makes Carol and Mike Sebbage's story so incredible - one that proves that love really can conquer all. The adorable pair, who currently live in North London, first met way, way back in 1972. Back then Mike was 14, while Carol was only 12, but when they met at the same school in Dorking, it was puppy-love from the get-go. The two began dating innocently enough, but Carol's heart was broken when Mike left school at age 16.

Credit: Press Association

The picture above was taken when they first met, and was the only memento of their short-lived relationship. The two drifted apart as they grew older, with Carol moving to Spain for a spell, before coming back to England and marrying another man in 1989. But then, 39 years after they parted, Mike and Carol miraculously reconnected.

The two reconnected in 2011 via the website Friends Reunited, and they immediately struck up the same rapport they'd once shared. They met at a pub near their old school, and straight away they kissed. Despite the fact that both of them now had adult children of their own, it was like no time had passed at all. They began dating again, and in 2014 Mike got down on one knee and proposed to his first love. They married on September 18, 2015, at Enfield Register Office, and their old school friends were all invited to watch them tie the knot.

Commenting on their decades-long romance in a recent interview, Carol stated: "We’d spotted each other on the website Friends Reunited and then started chatting on Facebook. I looked at his profile picture and thought he was still gorgeous. He still had that charming, cool look about him that I fell in love with all those years ago. That was it for both of us. We knew it was love and we have been together ever since.”

Credit: Press Association

Meanwhile, Mike stated: "It is strange that the internet brought us back together ... Seeing Carol again was incredible, 39 years after we first met in 1972. We hadn’t seen each other for so long but she was exactly as I remembered. She is very warm-hearted and I have even written a song for her too, she is the love of my life."

I suppose it goes to show that some very lucky people really can end up with their first love. They just have to take the long route to reconnect with them.