When the farming crisis hit Iowa’s economy in 1981, John left his home state to find work. “I moved to Saudi Arabia as a field engineer for an electrical firm,” he says. Soon after starting the role, he met his colleague Robert, who would regularly write letters to his family in Yorkshire, including his sister-in-law, Jane. “Other than working, there was very little to do aside from writing to people in the evenings,” says John. “Robert asked me if I’d like to write to Jane.”
Soon, the pair began exchanging letters and struck up a friendship. “The first letter I sent, I asked him whether Iowa was a city or a town,” Jane says with a laugh. “I’d never heard of it and didn’t know it was a state.” John returned to the US in 1982, before heading back to Saudi Arabia in 1983, but the pair continued to write to each other regularly. “John used to send me lots of cards,” says Jane. “We enjoyed writing to each other but never expected it to lead to marriage.”
