This couple broke up in 1959. Could they find love again after 63 years apart?

She picked up her high school sweetheart at the Nashville International Airport.

As he slid into her passenger seat, she thought he looked strong and strapping. Just like he had the last time she had seen him.

She wanted to kiss him.

Needed to kiss him.

They barely made it out of the airport parking lot when she pulled over at a FedEx facility.

She got out of the car. He got out of the car.

They kissed underneath a security lamp post.

She was 80 years old. He was 84.

It had been 63 years since Caroline Wallace had last kissed Eddie Lamm.

There had been so much drama in those six-plus decades — marriages, children, war, careers, heartache and death. For all those years, the two kids from the doo-wop, sock-hop days at Nashville's West High School (which is now a middle school) could only dream about seeing each other again. She was a beauty queen (Miss Nashville 1959), and he was a fly boy who would amass 5,000 hours as a pilot/bombardier in a career that included a tour in Vietnam.

On April 20, 2023, Caroline and Eddie were back in Nashville for a high school reunion luncheon.

And she was showing something very special to her classmates.

Friday night lights

They might have avoided this whole lifetime-of-being-apart thing if Eddie would have simply given her his high school ring when Caroline was his best girl in the late 1950s.

Dwight Eisenhower was president. Chubby Checker was doing the twist. "American Bandstand" was one of the most popular television shows for teenagers.

It was September 1956. She was a sophomore, straight-A student and a cheerleader. He was a senior, with a Tennessean paper route as his only income.

Eddie got Caroline's phone number from a mutual friend. He invited her to a Friday night football game. 

From that point on ... "I was known as Eddie's girl," Caroline said.

They loved going water skiing on Old Hickory Lake. They went to school dances and looked sharp together.

But there was a problem. 

In an age where young couples were getting married before they turned 20, Eddie wouldn't give Caroline his high school ring. Years later, he said he just didn't feel like he was ready because he didn't have a full-time job or career. He couldn't afford commitment, he said.

They dated for more than three years. For part of that time, he attended the University of Tennessee studying civil engineering while she was going to high school.

In 1959, she entered the Miss Nashville pageant, stitched up a short red costume and did a dance routine to "Won't You Charleston With Me" ending with a jitterbug to "Sweet Georgia Brown." When she won the pageant, "I was walking on air," she said. 

Eddie was dropping out of college. "I just quit," he said. "I didn't like it."

In December 1959, he decided to join the Air Force. He had a going-away party, and she came.

He drove her home and asked her permission to kiss her on the steps of her parents' house.

That was it, their last 1950s kiss.

They broke up.

'She looked just like you'

Eddie served as navigator and bombardier in B-47s.

His military career was notable because he was part of the nuclear team that was ready during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. He flew scouting missions in an "Old Birddog" (Cessna 140) in Vietnam in 1969-70. "I took fire," he said. "But I never got hit."

But on Dec. 24, 1961, he had dropped another kind of bomb.

After four dates, he married Martha "Polly" Pipper. Caroline knew her well. She and Polly had been friends at West High. Caroline and Eddie had been on double dates with Polly and other boys.

Here's what Caroline thought when she heard about Eddie's marriage: "What in the hell did she have that I didn't have."

Caroline's mother, Iona, went to Eddie and Polly's wedding. "She informed me of the blow-by-blow description," Caroline said. "I would start crying. Then my mother said, 'She looked just like you.'"

Eddie and Polly moved to California and had two sons. Eventually, they ended up living in a gated community in Canyon Lake, and he had a long career as a pilot and instructor in the military.

So close to Eddie

Caroline's first marriage, she said, didn't go well. 

She had two daughters, which was great. But she said she only had one happy year.

She had several jobs as a young woman. She worked as the host of a Saturday morning television program called "Out Front." She worked at a radio station. She worked in the travel industry in Nashville. She also became an interior designer.

She was divorced in 1985 and remarried in 1989.

This time, she had a great marriage to a World War II veteran named George Kennedy (not the actor). Kennedy was 19 years older than Caroline and taught her to fly a Cessna 310.

Caroline and George established a fly-in community in Newborn, Georgia.

They were so happy.

Each year, they attended an aviation reunion so George could see his old pilot buddies in Hemet, California.

That's about a 40-minute drive to Canyon Lake.

"I was so close to Eddie," Caroline said. "I had no idea."

George Kennedy died in 2001. They had been married 12 years.

'I've got life left'

Polly didn't like Caroline.

She would catch Eddie daydreaming and she would accuse him of thinking about "that damn Caroline," he said.

In 2020, Eddie noticed Polly's head drooping. She said she couldn't hold it up straight.

She was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease). Eddie put a hospital bed in their house.

"I was her caretaker," he said. "It gave me a whole different outlook on life and death. It changed me."

Polly died Dec. 22, 2021. They had been married almost 60 years.

About a month after her funeral at Riverside National Cemetery, he said he came to the realization ... "I've got life left."

He told her he loved her

On April 23, 2022, Eddie called Caroline.

"She probably doesn't remember me," he thought.

She didn't recognize the number, so she didn't answer the phone. So he continued to call.

Nine times.

Finally, he called a mutual friend who called Caroline to explain that phone number from California with the 951 area code was Eddie Lamm.

Caroline said she had been seriously ill. She thanked Jesus for "keeping me alive."

She cried in front of her cat "Shortstop." She dried her eyes and called Eddie.

"It was everything I dreamed of," she said. "We talked like we had talked the day before."

On their third phone call, he told her he loved her.

He said he had plans to see an old friend, so he was coming to visit Nashville.

That was when she picked him up from the airport.

"Why couldn't my children have his bone structure?" she said to herself.

They kissed under the lamp post at the FedEx facility.

"That kiss felt like home," she said. "I started crying."

He barely saw his old friend on that trip.

There was one thing she wanted

He proposed to her by Canyon Lake in California in September 2022.

"I got on my knee and did it properly," Eddie said. "I said, 'Will you marry me?'"

Caroline said: "Of course."

He presented her with a beautiful ring that his mother had worn during her marriage to his father.

Caroline said it didn't feel right. That ring "was too precious," she said.

There was something else she wanted.

His high school ring.

This time, he gave it to her.

On Oct. 9, 2022, they were married in a ceremony at Lake Arrowhead in the Southern California mountains. Her grandsons walked her down the aisle. The songs "Near You" and "Time in a Bottle" played.

They have been living in his longtime home in Canyon Lake. She is overseeing a redesign.

On April 20, they flew to Nashville for a high school reunion luncheon.

She was still Eddie's girl. But this time, she had his ring.