For Natalie Crowe and Austin Tatman’s families, the newlywed’s wedding photo may look familiar — and for good reason.
The photo mimics one they took more than a decade ago in a play Jeep when they were childhood friends, and has become an ode to their bond that has stood the test of time.
Crowe and Tatman were reunited in 2012 after not having seen each other for 12 years. They were best friends as pre-Kindergarten classmates in Ocala, Fla., in 1999, but lost touch after Crowe moved from Florida to Connecticut with her family.
The two began dating after they reconnected and were married in April.
“It was just like being back with your best friend that you haven’t seen, which was the craziest experience for me,” Tatman told TODAY.
Their random encounter came after Crowe was looking through her mom’s old address book back in 2012. The first name that popped into her mind to search for was Tatman’s.
“Still to this day, I have no idea why I went to it,” she told the talk show.
Crowe reached out to Tatman on Facebook to ask if he remembered her. He did.
Her mother had encouraged her, noting that “if you remember him, then he remembers you.”
They eventually traded cell phone numbers and learned that Crowe’s father lived just 10 minutes away from Tataman in Florida. The two then met in person and rekindled their childhood bond.
They made it work in a long-distance relationship as seniors in high school, with Crowe in Connecticut and Tatman in Florida. Tatman then went on to attend the University of Florida in Gainesville while Crowe went to the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
Tatman proposed in 2017 and the two were married on April 13 in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
Their guestbook for the nuptials was in the style of an old address book, an ode to what led Crowe to finding Tatman in the first place.
“You can never replicate that … being away from someone and reconnecting,” Tatman said.
