It's a New York love story: A boy from Brooklyn and a girl from Queens, who shared their first kiss on the Staten Island Ferry.
"Mom just described it as fireworks and that is pretty much how their marriage was, but good fireworks, a very loving marriage," said Carolyn Talan, one of the couple's daughter.
Robert Talan and Julie Ann Baricevac married young, and their relationship was soon tested: in 1966, a year after they wed, Robert was sent off to war in Vietnam. They wrote letters to each other constantly.
Robert returned and the couple built a life together, raising three kids in Flushing.
Julie Ann died 15 years ago, Robert moved to Florida, and somehow 14 of her letters to him in Vietnam ended up on eBay.
"It was a shame that these were out of the hands of the family, and I started thinking, 'How can that be fixed?'" said Joe Biunno, the man who bought the letters on eBay.
Biunno read about the letters on a Woodside Facebook page. After he bought them, he asked other members for help in finding the Talans.
Robert and Julie Ann's oldest daughter, Lauren, a lawyer in New Jersey, was located and contacted.
"It is like a hug from the past from my mom," Lauren Talan said.
The letters span three months, from 1966 to '67. They contain expressions of love and longing, along with small talk.
(One of the love letters that Robert Talan and Julie Ann Baricevac wrote to each other during the Vietnam War. Alyssa Paolicelli/NY1).
But there is a hint of danger. In one letter, Julie Ann says she's a "nervous wreck" after reading about something that happened to her husband, an incident now lost to history.
"This is my mother this is her love, the love she shared with my father, it is remarkable to get them back," added the couple's youngest daughter, Carolyn.
The sisters said they were overwhelmed not just by the letters, but by how strangers came together to return them.
"Especially the community that means so much to us, as my mom grew up here, rally and try to find us, it is incredibly heartwarming," Lauren said.
The man who put the letters on eBay said he found them at a flea market in New Jersey.
While the Talan family may never know how they got there, they are glad they made their way home.
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