A love story 71 years in the making for Carmel Valley resident

An 86-year-old Carmel Valley resident recently proved that it’s never too late for a fairy tale ending.

After 71 years, a former classmate from Utah got in touch with Angie Osborn in San Diego. They reconnected over the phone, fell in love and got engaged on a trip to Disneyland this spring and were married on June 1.

“My lonely quiet evenings ended with a phone call on Feb. 6, 2015 when a warm voice called and asked for Angeline,” Angie said.

The man was Jim Fisher and while Angie didn’t quite remember him, he had never forgotten her—he could never forget the girl who sang “Ave Maria” in a white smock in their junior high school Christmas pageant. For years he would ask people whatever happened to Angeline, “his angel in white.” A mutual friend finally knew the answer as to how to find her and passed along Angie’s number.

Through their conversations, they learned that they had lived only 10 blocks away from each other in Salt Lake City.

Angie has lived in San Diego since 1991 and many in Carmel Valley knew her as “The Card Queen” of Elam’s Hallmark in Piazza Carmel. She worked there for 14 years until leaving last year.

Both Angie and Jim had been married before and both marriages had ended as the result of health problems. Angie had been alone for 12 years and Jim had been living alone for four years.

Jim tried to talk Angie into taking a trip to Disneyland together but she was unsure because she didn’t know him well enough. A year ago, they did agree to meet in Salt Lake City and they spent two hours together, poring over old yearbooks and sharing stories.

The two continued talking on the phone for 14 months before Angie decided to agree to that trip to Disneyland, in April 2016, when she felt like she finally knew him well enough.

“When I stepped off that train, he said it was like a movie love story,” Angie said.

They spent days together on the Disneyland trip and they fell in love — Jim proposed marriage and Angie, without hesitation, said “yes.”

“He’s such a romantic, kind and wonderful man,” Angie said.

Until last week, the pair talked on the phone every night for at least two hours. Angie said you would think that they wouldn’t have anything left to talk about but they do.

While the original plan was for Angie to leave for Utah on June 1 and for the couple to return to the Anaheim area on June 25 for the wedding, plans changed. Angie landed on Wednesday at 1 p.m. and they were married at 5 p.m. Seventy-one years was a long enough wait.

For the wedding, Angie wore a lace dress that she had worn at her step-granddaughter’s wedding. She said she felt like a million dollars in it and couldn’t wait to wear it again. On her wedding night she planned to sing “Ava Maria” for Jim, knowing that he would “go to pieces.”

The couple plans to split time between Fisher’s home near Park City and Angie’s Carmel Valley condominium that her daughter is helping convert from a cozy place for one to a home for two.

“I’m so excited and so grateful that this could happen in my life…I will have no more lonely nights,” Angie said. “You can be lucky in love at 86.”