They had a teen summer romance. 26 years later, they reunited

Dirk and Kerri opened up to each other on the Ireland trip. “It felt like some divine intervention that we were there for each other," she says. (Courtesy Kerri Cunningham and Dirk Stevens via CNN Newsource)

When American teenager Kerri Cunningham was dragged by her parents to Europe in the summer of 1993, she was less than impressed.

Dragged might sound like dramatic wording, but that’s how 14-year-old Kerri saw it at the time.

Kerri reacted to the vacation plans “from the teenage point of view of ‘Oh, it’s taking away from my summer break, and I want to hang out with my friends.’”

Leaving her beachside hometown in the Hamptons, in New York, was the last thing she wanted.

“I was dreading the trip,” Kerri tells CNN Travel today.

Looking back today, Kerri says this was all a bit of a “spoiled brat, teenage attitude.” The trip — embarking first to the U.K., then France and culminating in a two-week-bus tour around Italy — was an amazing opportunity.

Kerri realizes now that she was fortunate. Her parents wanted their daughters to see the world. But it was hard to see it that way back then. All teenage Kerri could fixate on was the time away from her life in New York.

Little did Kerri know this voyage to Europe would change her life forever. That she’d still feel the reverberations of this trip three decades on.

A significant meeting

The first few days of the trip were uneventful, at least in Kerri’s mind. She sulked her way across the U.K., and boarded a ferry with the other tour participants from Dover, England to Calais, France. She was glad two of her sisters were on the trip too, but she still resented being there.

“And then I saw Dirk,” recalls Kerri. “And it instantly got better.”

As the ship crossed the English Channel, and the White Cliffs of Dover retreated into the distance, Kerri’s parents got chatting to an English family, the Stevenses, who were also en route to the continent to embark on the Italy bus tour.

Dirk was their 15-year-old son. Like Kerri, he was a reluctant teenage tagalong to a family holiday. But then he smiled at Kerri, and everything started to look up.

Kerri thought he was “so handsome.”

“I was immediately smitten,” she admits. “Hugh Grant was really big at that time. And he sort of had this young Hugh Grant hair. Being an American girl, Hugh Grant was the guy.”

“A bad haircut,” says Dirk today, laughing. “But it worked at the time.”

Dirk tells CNN Travel he also felt an “instant attraction” to Kerri. He vividly remembers his first impression of her: “Beautiful smile, dark hair, really pretty.”

Before long, the two teens were sitting side-by-side, sharing headphones and listening to Kerri’s Walkman music player.

Their parents bonded quickly, too.

“We all just got chatting and hit it off,” recalls Dirk. “Our dads are sort of similar guys, you know, like to take machines apart, make something new, build something, design something, have a bonfire…”

As the group disembarked the ferry in France and boarded the bus to Italy — stopping off here and there en route — the two families grew even closer.

“Our dads would be in a pub somewhere or grabbing a drink, and the moms would be shopping,” recalls Kerri.

Their parents’ friendship helped cement Kerri and Dirk’s bond, and Kerri also enjoyed observing the way Dirk interacted with his family. Dirk’s dad used a wheelchair, and Dirk was often the family member who’d help his dad navigate the cobbled streets of Italy.

“Here’s this 15-year-old who’s pushing his dad all over Europe in this wheelchair, and not complaining about it, and getting on with it, but doing it with a smile on his face,” Kerri recalls.

She noticed that Dirk seemed to always “see the bright side of everything.” His warm, breezy attitude won her over.

“I had never met anyone my age who was so comfortable with himself and his family and so accepting of me and mine,” says Kerri. “Everything was just easy and fun. We just got each other and there was a very strong attraction.”

In the evenings, while the parents were deep in conversation and Kerri’s sisters were doing their own thing, Dirk and Kerri would steal time alone.

“Us two, sneaking off…” recalls Dirk. “There are pictures of us with bottles of champagne we’d taken at dinner.”

They became “fast friends, which became romantic,” as Dirk puts it. At one of the Italian hotels, they danced together, arm-in-arm. They always sat together at dinners, stealing glances and sharing in-jokes.

“We just felt so comfortable together,” says Dirk. “I remember being on a gondola in Venice and just laughing the entire time.”

“I’m pretty sure we stole a few kisses when our parents weren’t looking,” says Kerri. “I thought he was the cutest boy I had ever met.”

A summer to remember

At the end of the two-week tour, the Cunninghams and the Stevenses promised to stay in touch. There was already talk about getting together the following summer.

Still, for Dirk and Kerri, saying goodbye wasn’t easy. In fact, “it was awful,” says Dirk.

“Just as you find someone special, you have to say goodbye,” he recalls. “But, our parents had already said we’d meet them next summer. Nothing was planned at that point, but everyone was excited for the idea.”

Back in their respective hometowns on opposite sides of the Atlantic, the Cunningham family and the Stevens family remained connected.

“Mum would talk to Mom and we’d be on the phone after,” recalls Dirk. “And Dad with Dad. Soon dates were arranged and the excitement and anticipation builds up.”

A plan was in place: the Stevenses would visit New York in the following summer of 1994, and stay with the Cunninghams at their home on Long Island.

As they counted down to this reunion, Dirk and Kerri exchanged letters, sending each other magazine clippings and writing dispatches about their lives on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

They also enjoyed “long phone calls with the old plug-in phones, when you had a really long extension lead so you could go and sit on the stairs or in the bathroom to try and get privacy,” as Dirk recalls.

“My dad was very strict, so I wasn’t allowed to talk to many boys on the phone,” says Kerri.

But Dirk was an exception.

“Unlike other boys our age, he wasn’t afraid to talk to my parents on the phone,” she says. “In fact, I think he really enjoyed it! And my parents really loved him.”

For Kerri and Dirk, the 12-month countdown to their reunion only intensified their feelings for each other.

“We’d missed each other for a year, were desperate to see each other,” says Dirk.

Kerri remembers the moment she saw Dirk again on Long Island in summer 1994. He smiled at her. Right away, she felt “at home.”

She loved how he greeted her, calling her “darling.”

“I know it’s an English thing,” says Kerri of the pet name. “But when he called me ‘darling’ — in person, in emails or on the phone — my heart would just melt.”

“It was a very exciting time,” says Dirk of that summer in New York.

Kerri and Dirk spent every moment together. They hung out at the beach together, Dirk tagged along to Kerri’s summer job. They spent long evenings in each other’s company.

“This was first-love stuff,” says Dirk. “Knowing that our time together was limited, made it all the more special.”

“We loved each other and were great friends, but we lived an ocean apart and never even considered being together. I guess we thought… ‘How could we?’ We were just teenagers,” says Kerri.

When Kerri and Dirk said goodbye at the end of Dirk’s visit, they did so accepting “that we couldn’t be together,” she says.

“But knowing that we’d get to see each other again at some point,” adds Dirk.

“Yeah,” says Kerri. “I kind of felt like, ‘Oh, we’ll always… we’ll always…”

“…Have this,” says Dirk, finishing Kerri’s sentence.

Changing times

After their New York summer, Kerri and Dirk continued to write letters and speak to each other on the phone. But as they finished up high school, this communication gradually slowed down.

Calls became “every two months, then three months…” recalls Dirk.

Then they dropped off almost completely when they graduated. It was still the mid-1990s, and there was no social media offering easy long distance back-and-forth. Staying in touch required time and effort.

“We both got busy. We loved each other, but we weren’t sure when we’d get to see each other again,” says Dirk. “We were both students that couldn’t afford expensive flights. Life gets in the way.”

“We were both going to college, working, dating and our lives were moving ahead,” says Kerri. “We were so far apart, being together just didn’t seem possible.”

Still, even when they weren’t in touch, the two always thought of each other fondly. Plus, their parents remained connected, so Kerri and Dirk got regular secondhand updates on each other.

“Mum would pass me on information about Kerri and the family,” recalls Dirk. “We’d catch each other every now and then.”

As email became more commonplace, Kerri and Dirk would send the occasional note back and forth. They’d write, as Dirk recalls it, “how you doing? Thought of you today. Miss you.”

“Emails were easier than phone calls,” he says.

Then, in Kerri’s first year of college, her father was diagnosed with ALS, a progressive neurodegenerative disease. When she was 19, he passed away.

It was a devastating loss for Kerri and the Cunningham family. The Stevenses were also heartbroken to hear the news.

Around the time of her father’s death, Kerri had been supposed to go to Paris with some girlfriends. The trip got called off.

Through the grapevine, Dirk’s mother heard about Kerri’s canceled vacation. She immediately offered a suggestion to Kerri’s mother: she’d love to take Kerri and Dirk to Paris, together. Dirk’s mother had studied there when she was younger, and knew the city well. It was the least she could do, she said, after the loss they’d weathered.

Looking back today, Kerri suggests that Dirk’s mother was also keen for Dirk to reconnect with Kerri.

“She knew how much we cared for each other and I think she wanted us to be together as much as we wanted it,” says Kerri.

Kerri’s mother encouraged her daughter to go. Soon, Kerri started daydreaming about Paris again. Flights were booked and hotels arranged — and Kerri and Dirk got back in regular touch. Via email, they started counting down the days until their reunion.

“All that excitement built up again,” says Dirk.

Kerri hoped seeing Dirk would be a balm to her grief. And when he picked her up from the airport in February 2001, she was proven right.

It was like they’d never been apart, though it had been seven years since they’d last seen each other in person. They were now in their early 20s.

“We were different, we’d grown up a bit,” says Dirk. “Kerri was more beautiful.”

“It happened to be Valentine’s Day week,” says Kerri. “It was very romantic.”

With Dirk’s mother leading the way, Kerri and Dirk visited Notre Dame, took walks on the Seine, climbed the Eiffel Tower, visited the Moulin Rouge and toured the Louvre. They also went off the tourist track.

“Mum had studied Art History and languages there, so she took us to see unusual buildings, unique architecture, cafes she remembered…” says Dirk.

Everywhere in Paris felt suffused with romance. The Eiffel Tower was emblazoned with a big red heart. All the restaurants had roses on the table centerpiece.

“Everywhere we went Dirk would say ‘Do you like that? I ordered it special, just for you.’ And his mom and I would laugh,” says Kerri.

But it really did feel, recalls Kerri, like “everything in Paris that week was for us.”

“It was magical,” she says. “After his mom would go to bed, we’d go out and find a little bar where we would have drinks and dance and share our fears and our dreams. It was so lovely and I didn’t want it to end.”

The trip was perfect, but it also felt bittersweet. Kerri was grieving her father. Some part of her also saw Paris as a farewell to her teenage love for Dirk.

As an adult, she felt the barriers of ever being together even more acutely.

“It just seemed impossible,” she says.

Dirk and Kerri were now in their early twenties, tied to their respective home countries through jobs, friends and commitments.

They said farewell at the end of the week with no plans to see one another again.

“We knew we’d keep in touch and fate would do its thing,” says Dirk. “It’s always a tough goodbye, with hugs, tears and kisses.”

“I guess it always felt like a ‘vacation romance’ and we told ourselves that’s all it was to avoid getting hurt,” says Kerri.

Different directions

After Paris, Kerri went back to New York and Dirk returned to the UK. As they moved through their twenties, Kerri and Dirk both made life choices that cemented them on different paths.

“I had different girlfriends, and ended up having a baby and later getting married and having three children,” says Dirk.

Meanwhile, Kerri met and fell in love with a fellow Long Islander, Dean.

The Cunningham family and the Stevens family remained in touch. Kerri’s mother went to Dirk’s sister’s wedding in the UK. Dirk’s parents visited Kerri’s mother in New York. And Dirk’s parents attended Kerri’s wedding to Dean, in the summer of 2010.

“All the families were still connected and loved each other,” says Dirk.

Through their families, Kerri and Dirk learned updates about one another, and how they were navigating life’s ups and downs.

In 2015, Dirk’s daughter was diagnosed with a rare genetic neurological and developmental disorder. Then in 2016, his mother died suddenly.

And that same year, Kerri’s husband Dean was diagnosed with a terminal Glioblastoma brain tumor.

Dirk reached out to Kerri after hearing the news, offering his support from afar.

But Kerri was swept up in hospital appointments, caring for her husband and processing the inevitable loss that was to come.

“It was 20 years after my dad…it just felt like ‘This is happening again,’” recalls Kerri. “I remember looking at my mom and my sister and just saying, ‘I can’t do this.’ But you do it, you find the strength and you do it.”

Eighteen months after his cancer diagnosis, Dean passed away.

“I lost him in 2017,” says Kerri. “We did not have any children.”

In the aftermath of Dean’s passing, Kerri says her “world turned upside down.” She didn’t know how to process the loss or what to do next.

A couple of years passed in a blur. Kerri fell into a relationship that didn’t feel right. She agonized over the future.

“Then my aunt suggested a trip to Ireland with her to ‘get away,’” says Kerri. “Around the same time, Dirk emailed me to see how I was doing. I told him of my upcoming plans for Ireland and he asked if he and his dad could meet us there. We hadn’t seen each other in 17 years.”

Kerri was surprised when Dirk suggested joining her in Dublin. She said Dirk and his father were welcome to come along, but internally, she doubted they would. Kerri knew Dirk was married, with three children in the picture. She thought it was unlikely that he would board a flight to Dublin to see old family friends out of the blue.

But unbeknownst to Kerri, Dirk was separated from his wife. The couple had gone through a tough time and were in the process of getting divorced. Dirk had moved in with his father.

Dirk didn’t mention any of this to Kerri in his emails. He didn’t want to seem like he was trying to overshadow Kerri’s loss. And he didn’t have any specific intentions when he got back in touch. He’d just been trying to reconnect with old friends in the wake of his marriage breaking down. He knew his father would enjoy seeing Kerri, and it was easy for them to get to Ireland from their home in England.

An Irish reunion

Until the moment Kerri and Dirk reunited in Dublin, she didn’t believe he’d come.

But then, suddenly, he was in front of her. Standing there, in person, for the first time in almost two decades.

“When we saw each other, we hugged so tightly and I started crying. I realized I had never stopped loving him and, boy, was it nice to be hugged by such an old, true friend,” recalls Kerri.

She surprised herself by feeling the same sentiment she’d felt when she reunited with Dirk on Long Island, in the summer of 1994: “It felt like I was home.”

Dirk felt this same feeling when he saw Kerri: a surprising certainty that everything was right with the world, despite everything they’d been through while they were apart.

The two spent the rest of the day in Dublin together, with Dirk’s father and Kerri’s aunt completing the party. They toured the Guinness Factory and went out for dinner as a group.

And as Dirk pushed his father’s wheelchair through the Dublin streets, Kerri’s aunt walked alongside, Kerri had a feeling of déjà vu. It felt like the summer they’d first met, touring Europe in 1993, “like we were teenagers again. Just exploring a city with our chaperones.”

They were only together for a couple of days, but during this time, Kerri and Dirk opened up to each other. She told Dirk about her unhappiness and uncertainty amid her grief. He told her about his marriage breakdown.

“As old friends do, we talked — about all the good and bad going on in our lives — and the truth came out,” says Kerri. “It felt like some divine intervention that we were there for each other.”

“That holiday, the time we spent, was just perfect, and it was just what we both needed, unknowingly, perhaps,” says Dirk.

It helped that their long history led to an easy comfort, even after years apart. They felt able to be totally honest with each other.

“It was very freeing to just be with someone that you trust and spill your guts to them,” says Kerri.

Perhaps it was Kerri and Dirk’s ease with one another that explained why, everywhere they went, strangers assumed they were a couple.

“In a pub, just having a conversation in a queue…they’re like, ‘Oh my God. How long have you two been together? You’re the nicest couple we’ve ever met,’” recalls Dirk. “And we’re like, ‘No, we’re not. We’re old friends, and we just came with my dad and her aunt.’”

The two laughed off strangers’ assumptions, but both wondered if there was something in them.

As they readied themselves to say goodbye, both Kerri and Dirk hoped this wouldn’t be goodbye forever.

And then, before Kerri left for the airport, Dirk decided to take a chance: he told Kerri he loved her.

“Maybe we can make this work?” he asked her.

For Kerri, this was the decisive moment. It was scary and unknown, but she felt she should take a leap of faith into a life with Dirk. She knew she loved him too.

“I knew I had to give us a real chance, because something much bigger had brought us back together,” she says today.

‘Continuing the journey’

The leap of faith paid off. Today, six years since they reunited in Ireland, Kerri and Dirk are a couple, now in their forties, living life together, as a team.

Kerri’s job still ties her to the US, while Dirk’s kids live with him fulltime, so he’s in the U.K.

But the couple make the back and forth work. Kerri splits her time across the Atlantic, and loves spending time with Dirk’s children. She says getting to know them has been “a real gift.”

In the six years since they reunited, Kerri and Dirk have helped each other rebuild their lives, embrace the present and embark on a new future together.

“Needless to say, both of our families were over the moon,” adds Kerri.

Dirk’s father recently passed away, but before he died, he told Kerri she was the best thing that happened to his son.

Kerri’s mother, who is in her eighties, is also very supportive. When Kerri told her she’d reunited with Dirk, Kerri’s mother told her their love story was “written in the stars.”

“While she doesn’t love me being so far away most of the year, she knows that I am where I’m meant to be,” says Kerri.

While Kerri and Dirk wish that her father and his mother had also lived to see them finally get together, Kerri believes they know. She feels their presence, their influence in her life, all the time.

“We have lots of angels that look over us,” Kerri says, referring to all the loved ones she and Dirk have lost, including her late husband, Dean, who she’ll always hold close to her heart.

“Dean and I, we travelled all around the world, and we did fun stuff, and he lived an amazing life as well. I’m forever grateful for those years,” Kerri says, reflecting that “Dean would be very happy” to see where she is today.

Navigating the loss of her late husband also helped Kerri have the courage to embrace her new chapter with Dirk.

While she always felt safe and comfortable with Dirk, she knew any relationship comes with risk, with its challenges and uncertainties.

“But after Dean died, I said, ‘I’m not afraid of anything, because I feel like I’ve been through the worst thing possible,’” recalls Kerri. “If this doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work.”

And when Dirk makes her laugh and makes her smile, Kerri embraces that happiness wholeheartedly and gratefully, not taking any of it for granted.

“We always have fun,” Kerri says of her life with Dirk. “You can’t be sad forever. Life goes on, and I think everybody deserves to be happy…and the hard times are always the hardest when you’re in them and you realize how strong you know we all are. We’re all a lot stronger than we think we are.”

Together, Kerri and Dirk’s attitude to life is to “accept and enjoy the journey,” as Dirk puts it.

“Enjoy the journey,” echoes Kerri. “That’s how we started. We started out on a journey. And we met each other.”

“And now we’re just continuing the journey,” says Dirk. “Let the universe take you along. You know, it will guide you where you’re meant to go.”

Kerri adds — jokingly — that the moral of their story is “go on a trip with your parents when you’re a teenager, even if you don’t want to.”

But more seriously, Kerri suggests it’s “allow yourself to be happy, and to be open to the universe.”

“We were always meant to be together,” she says of Dirk. “We are twin flames that found our way back to each other after all those years.”

Written by Francesca Street, CNN