When Emily and Cameron Kohlman met in hospital as four-year-olds having the same major operation, they both found their perfect tonic.
They suffered bladder exstrophy, in which the bladder develops outside the body, and had surgery within days of each other in 1995.
The pair bonded while playing as they recovered at the specialist centre in Baltimore, Maryland, and shared their first kiss under a pile of cuddly toys before returning to their home states.
But Emily never forgot her little friend and in 2004 decided to track Cameron down, exchanging phone calls before paying him a surprise visit in 2006.
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They soon fell in love and he popped the question in November 2012 with them tying the knot in 2015 – 20 years after meeting in hospital.
And they completed their fairytale by becoming parents to Everleigh Grace, two. Emily, 28, said: “We have bladder exstrophy to thank for everything.
"Without this birth ‘defect’, I wouldn’t have met the man I married, the father of my daughter.
"As the condition is so rare we sought help from John Hopkins Hospital, even though I was from Wisconsin and Cameron was from Ohio.
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“It was nice to meet someone with the same thing, even just to have someone to play with.”
Emily, who works in a medical billing department in Canton, Ohio, said of her reunion with car salesman Cameron, 27: “It was quite awkward at first.
"But that only lasted 10 minutes.
“We were old friends and it was like no time had passed. It was everything I had hoped. We started dating shortly afterwards.
“I moved to Ohio in 2012 and a few months later, Cameron asked me to marry him. He got down on one knee and pulled a ring out of his cowboy boot.
"He told me how much I meant to him, how important life together would be.”
