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Jeannie Gustavson, 68, and Steve Watts, 71, dated secretly for seven years in the 70s during College days.
They broke up 42 years ago as her family didn't approve of interracial dating.
A mixed-race couple who were college sweethearts and dated each other secretly in the 1970s have recently reunited and discovered they are 'still in love'.
Jeannie Gustavson and Steve Watts met as students at Loyola University in Chicago when she was a freshman, aged 18, and he was a senior, aged 21, and they soon started dating.
However, he was black and she was white and her family disapproved of interracial dating, meaning they had to conduct their relationship in secret for seven years.
Despite ultimately breaking up forty-two years ago, Jeannie, now 68, always regret the decision to end the relationship and has never forgotten about Steve.
Jeannie recalls how her college boyfriend Steve, now 71, was 6ft 4in tall and was 'handsome, extremely intelligent, witty and quite charming with a killer smile'.
However, as a mixed-race couple in the 1970s, she explained that times were 'turbulent' and her family was 'not understanding or tolerant' of their relationship.
'I was very hurt and very baffled by what my family did and said,' Jeannie said.
'We had to keep our relationship a secret.'
Jeannie graduated in 1975 and became a nurse and Steve studied a master's degree in education and became a German teacher.
But, after nearly eight years together, Jeannie ended the relationship over the phone due to the building pressures of family, work, distance and conflicting schedules and has regretted the decision for the rest of her life.
The former college sweethearts never spoke or saw each other again, and Jeannie since married someone else, then divorced, but said as the years went by she never forgot about Steve.
Late last year, Jeannie began searching for him online, hoping for a second chance or to apologize for breaking up with him.
She wrote recently: 'Forty two years later, retired, with a computer and nothing but time on my hands, could I find him? Could I apologize? Could we be friends?'
Her efforts to track him down seemed futile for seven months, until she made contact with his niece who told her Steve was in a nursing home in Chicago and gave her the address.
Jeannie wrote to him twice but didn't get response.
Eventually she showed up at the care home facility this summer with their graduation photo in her hand and butterflies in her stomach.
She recalled their reunion, writing: 'The minute he rolled into the visiting room and uttered the sweet nickname he gave me, forty two years melted away.
'He and I were 18 and 21 again.
We cried, we laughed, we held each other and most wonderfully we realized we were still in love.'
Steve had suffered two strokes 15 years ago, leaving him debilitated and Jeannie was his first visitor in ten years.
'I knew at that moment that he still loved me, and this time it was going to be forever.
I just knew it,' .
With the help of a GoFundMe page, and using the rest of her savings, Jeannie has managed to bring Steve out of the nursing home to her home in Portland, Oregan, where she is now his carer.
Although Steve finds it difficult to speak, he can still make Jeannie laugh and they have forgiven each other for the past and rekindled their long-lost love.
She said: 'I did a very stupid thing 42 years ago and I've regretted it ever since. And all I can do now is love him as best I can and see to it that he's happy and give him the quality of life that he really deserves and he's missed all these years.'
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