KEN Kaylor first laid eyes on Rosie McMahon by a postbox in Bardwell Road on August 1, 50 years ago.

Yesterday they met up at the exact same spot at the exact same time – 2.15pm.

But what makes this love story truly extraordinary is that for 40 years in between they had nothing to do with each other.

It all started with a blind date.

Mr Kaylor, then aged 15, was a pupil at Magdalen College School, and 14-year-old Rosie Austin was at Milham Ford girls’ grammar school in Marston Road.

“I thought she was rather nice,” he said.

“She was very pretty and very intelligent – she went on to become head girl at her school.”

The pair fell in love, went out together for four years, and were engaged at the age of 19. But she went to university in Leicester while he stayed behind in Oxford to retake his A-Levels.

By the time Mr Kaylor went to Leicester to join her a year later, she had already met her future husband.

Mr Kaylor ended up meeting his wife of 40 years, Lyn Thompson, in Leicester and they had two sons, Matthew and Simon.

Mrs McMahon divorced her first husband and remarried. Her second husband Phillip died of lymphoma six years ago.

She and her sister Beryl were helping their mum Joyce Austin move out of her house in Weldon Road in Marston and into a care home in Gosport when Beryl discovered Christmas cards that Mr Kaylor had written to her mother.

Mrs McMahon, now 64, said: “My mum always said that my first and last loves were the only decent ones I had ever had.”

She wrote a letter to Mr Kaylor, now 65, to let him know of her mum’s change of address, and they ended up staying in touch.

She had spent her career working as a learning support co-ordinator in a school in Sussex, while he had become an English and media studies teacher in Leicestershire.

When Mr Kaylor’s wife died in October last year, he wrote to tell his former young love.

“Because she had been through exactly the same thing she was the most supportive and sympathetic person,” he said.

They started emailing each other, then at Christmas last year she sent him an email which read: “I’m going to take a deep breath, but would you like to meet up?”

He immediately said “yes”, and they met in January at a London hotel.

Within 20 minutes they realised they wanted to be back together.

Now they divide their time between Mr Kaylor’s house in Leicestershire and Mrs McMahon’s house in West Sussex.

Mr Kaylor said: “I assumed it would just be a friendship, I never dared hope that something would come of it.

“But we realised so quickly we felt just the same as we did in 1968 when we split up.”

Cherwell Boat House provided the punting for the couple while Taylors provided a lunch hamper.