A couple who split after a teenage romance are set to marry decades later after clicking again on Facebook.
Jeb Fairhurst and Michelle McNeal’s five-year romance ended in the 90s and they are wasting no time now they have reunited – with Jeb having proposed within weeks of them beginning to chat online.
Michelle was 15 when she fell for handsome 19-year-old biker Jeb, the neighbour of her best friend.
She said: “The attraction was instant. Jeb was the cool older lad. We’d watch him out of her window and swoon. I was in awe of him.”
One cold, rainy evening, Michelle was locked out of her pal’s house and Jeb offered to wait with her until her bus arrived.
“We got chatting, then he leaned in and kissed me. I had butterflies in my stomach the whole way home on the bus.
“He was funny and popular. He was handsome and he knew it – a real cheeky chappie. Girls followed him around, he could have had anyone – but he picked me.”
For the next five years Michelle, of Blackpool, and Jeb spent most of their time together.
But their happiness was shattered when Jeb broke his leg and hip in a car crash, leaving him on crutches for a year and unable to work.
Michelle said he became really low staying at home and they were not getting along. She said: “We decided to split but I felt heartbroken. I couldn’t stop thinking about him, wishing we’d never broken up.”
The 46-year-old, a nurse and mum to Ray, 21, and Elise, 14, split from husband Mark in 2016. She sent Jeb a friend request on Facebook but he only accepted it last November.
Michelle said: “The spark was instantly back. Within a couple of weeks, we’d told one another we still loved each other.”
They met at Christmas and shared a kiss as passionate as the rain-soaked clinch 30 years before.
And four weeks later, joiner Jeb, 50, dad to Morgan, 22, and Jasmine, 20, proposed.
He said: “I was too young and silly to settle down the first time. As soon as I saw her again, I knew I wanted to marry her.”
