Backpackers meet in 1990s with no way to stay in touch—then he has an idea
A sweeping love story that reads more movie script than marriage has captured the imagination of hundreds of thousands of viewers online, after Kate Latkovic, who grew up watching her parents’ romance play out like a folk tale in her own family, decided to share it online.
“Their story is incredibly special, and I was fortunate enough to grow up with that as an example for what I should look for. They set such a standard and expectation of what unconditional and unwavering love looks like,” Latkovic, 25, told Newsweek.
“But not everyone has that. My hope was that others would see that it is possible—that what they desire exists—that waiting is worth it.”
The reaction among viewers on TikTok, Latkovic said, went far beyond what she expected. Her retelling of her parents’ romance, shared under @kateglatkovic, has been viewed over 1.7 million times to date.
“This post was created with the intent to give others more hope for dating, relationships, and love as a whole,” the Texas-based creator said.
Her parents’ story is, at its heart, a real-life echo of the film Before Sunrise—two backpackers, a European city, one unrepeatable summer’s night, and a gamble on ever seeing each other again.
The story begins sometime in the mid-1990s, when Latkovic’s parents—her father, Tom, and her mother, Kim—crossed paths while each was independently backpacking through Central Europe. The pair spent the night talking, but, by morning, reality set in and neither had a way to reach the other. There were no cellphone numbers to exchange, no social media handles to search for. Both were leaving for different cities the very next day.
By every reasonable measure, their fling should have ended there, a fleeting encounter destined to fade into a travel story told at dinner parties for years to come, but Tom refused to let it.
Reasoning that his best chance of being found again was to make himself impossible to miss, he approached a street performer in the middle of a crowded public square and asked to join the act—gambling that if Kim was at this point still in the city and anywhere nearby, she would see him. He had scribbled his contact information on a scrap of paper, ready to press it into her hand if she by chance appeared.
She did. The plan worked. And instead of parting as scheduled, the two tore up their separate itineraries and decided to continue traveling together.
What unfolded over the following weeks turned a chance meeting into something neither of them had anticipated.
In one unguarded moment on the road, Tom told Kim: “When I look at you, I can see you old and gray, and I can see all our kids and grandkids around us.”
It was the sort of line that might send most new romances running for the exits. Kim, who by her own account was usually unsettled by that kind of early intensity, answered instead with two words: “Me too.”
Even the people around them sensed something different. A close friend of Tom’s, writing in his travel journal in Munich, Germany, the very night the couple met, left behind a wager that has since become family folklore: “10 bucks says Tom marries her.”
The entry, naming Kim and the friend accompanying her, Amanda, by name, now hangs framed in the family’s home. Tom’s friend was right. The couple married soon after returning from their travels, and, 27 years later, they are still together.
Latkovic shared the story to TikTok on June 4, alongside photographs of her parents both as young backpackers and as they are now. She told followers: “My parents’ love story always makes me emotional because their love for each other and commitment to one another has been so evident throughout my entire childhood and adult life. While how they met is rare, so is the love they share.
“If you’ve ever wondered if true love stories exist, their story is living proof that they do.”
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Sirena Bergman and James Debens
