The story — which could be straight out of a great movie plot about love and its mysterious ways — begins in 1945.

Dated May 4 of that year, the typed letter was written by a woman named Virginia to her husband, Rolf Christoffersen. At the time, he was a sailor in the Norwegian navy.

The envelope was marked “return to sender” and never found its way to her husband — until this week. Allen’s daughter used the Internet to find the phone number of someone named Rolf Christoffersen and gave him a call, leading her to his son in Santa Barbara, California.

“Someone called me at my office. They just Googled my name because I have the same name as my father. Melissa asked me where I grew up and I told her. She told me she had the letter. This is how I found out,” Christoffersen’s son, 66, told CNN.