Couple Who Met Online Discover They Were Preschool Sweethearts 30 Years Ago

A Modern Love Story

Even though he didn’t t recognize his old flame, Pounders messaged Giberson the moment he came across her picture last November on the dating website.

“I saw her photo and for whatever reason, was instantly drawn to her,” he tells PEOPLE. “She just had this great energy, you could tell. I can’t explain it, but I knew I had to get to know this girl.”

The two started texting and calling each other every night – unaware that they already knew each other – and planned their first date at a local restaurant.

“Of course, at that point, we still didn’t know we had been pre-K sweethearts, but when we met up and we hugged, it was like I had known him my whole life,” Giberson tells PEOPLE. “When I first saw him, I felt that I was staring at the man I was going to marry.”

The two saw each other every day after that and they instantly fell in love.

Remembering the Past

It wasn’t until two weeks ago – almost exactly a year after their first date – that the couple found out they had known each other as kids.

Giberson says the two grew up in the same area but had no mutual friends, and they didn’t t think they had ever run into one another.

“We were in the car and Justin casually mentioned that he loved my name because he had had a crush on a girl named Amy in his preschool,” she says. “Then I joked to him, ‘Well, it’s not me, so I don t want to hear about her!’ ”

But when they made the connection that they had both attended Sunshine Preschool at the exact same time, Giberson realized Justin’s crush might have actually been her.

“We asked our parents to dig up any preschool photos they had,” she says. “Justin’s mom found a photo of the two of us together and I just started crying, I was ecstatic. I was the Amy he had liked all those years ago! It was definitely meant to be.”