How a four-year-old Facebook message rekindled a lost romance

It all started before Darren McCaig and Jennifer Moran were even born.

Their parents were friends who skydived together. Their moms worked at the same bank for over 30 years. Their dads partnered up to open a business.

Then came the future couples first meeting: daycare.

Innocently, Darren picked up a toy truck that Jennifer was playing with.

Bad decision. In retaliation, she bit his face.

“Apparently, she didn’t like me looking at her truck. It was completely innocent,” Darren told Kelowna10.

They managed to overcome those taxing differences, soon becoming best friends. Later, they notched another milestone with each other - a first kiss at eight years old.

At 12, the pair took the next step: boyfriend and girlfriend.

But the world would have other plans – in the short term at least.

At 14, having moved to different cities, Jennifer broke up with Darren as long-distance dating was difficult at this stage in their lives.

Darren said he was devastated, believing it was the last time they would ever see each other.

And while it wasn’t the last time ever, the couples’ separation would last 30 years.

But Darren never forgot her smile.

In 2014, Jennifer, one day thinking back to her childhood, sent Darren a friend request on Facebook along with a message.

He didn’t see the notification for four years.

During this time, the pair unknowingly narrowly missed each other, even living across the river from each other in Edmonton.

Darren eventually saw the four-year-old message while working in Fort St. John one day, and nearly fell over.

“He got the friend request finally in 2018 and that’s when our lives moved forward again together,” Jennifer said.

The two quickly picked up where they left off, reconnecting with hours long phone calls and several Facebook messages.

He expressed to her how pivotal she was in his life as a motivation to be a better man. He told her, ‘it was always you.’

Two weeks after the friend request, the two reunited at the airport in Edmonton where he instantly scooped her off her feet.

“The biggest thing for me is when I saw those eyes. Those were the eyes of my childhood playmate and I recognized him immediately,” Jennifer said.

“Both of us were in shock. He placed me down, he held my head in his hands and he said, ‘I need you to do me a favour. Don’t ever leave me for 30 years again.’”

Seven months later, they moved to Kelowna together.

Darren has a tattoo on his hand with the letters, ‘DIFJ’. It stands for, ‘do it for Jen’, serving as motivation for everything he does.

“My true belief is that we came on this Earth together. We are true, true soulmates,” Jennifer said. “His soul had to go off and do what it needed to learn, and I needed to do what I needed to learn … then we finally came back together to end our lives together.”