He thought he’d never see his 1985 Greek vacation romance again. Then he felt a tap on the shoulder

By Francesca Street, CNN

(CNN) — Chuck Pappas almost didn’t show at the archaeological museum in Athens that day.

It was a busy, hot morning in the Greek capital. Chuck weaved around fellow tourists on the cobbled streets. Every so often, he’d glance up at incredible ancient ruins, then look down at his watch.

It had been about a month since the American had arranged to reunite with fellow traveler Diane Webber, who was visiting Europe from South Africa.

Chuck had thought about Diane a lot since their time together on the Greek island of Crete. In the space of three days, the pair — both in their 20s — had gone from strangers to confidants to something more.

“We hit it off right away,” Chuck tells CNN Travel today. “Then, she was off to Turkey, and I was off to another Greek island. I told her I would be in Athens … and if she was any way around, I would meet her at the museum on this date at this time — being pretty sure that neither of us would keep that date.”

Chuck promised Diane that every day, for five consecutive days, he’d wait on the marble steps of the National Archaeological Museum, for an hour at noon. If fate decreed it, he’d see her there.

For four days in a row, Chuck went to the museum and sat on the steps, alone. No sign of Diane. Every time, when 1 p.m. rolled around, he felt a stab of disappointment and tried to shrug it off.

He’d met lots of people — and flirted with lots of women — during his year away from Massachusetts traveling, but Diane stood out.

“We had deep conversations about life,” he says. “Conversations I did not have with anyone else all the months I was meeting people.”

On his final day in Athens, Chuck wondered about skipping the museum steps altogether. But something spurred him on. He wanted to keep the promise.

“So, I decided to make the trip over to the museum at the agreed time, expecting no one,” he recalls. “I got there and waited about an hour on the outside steps.”

And as the minutes ticked by, there was no sign of Diane.

“That’s it,” Chuck thought. “I’ll never see her again.”

This was 1985. There were no cell phones. Chuck didn’t have Diane’s contact details. If she wasn’t at the museum’s marble steps at noon, Chuck would have no way of getting in touch.

When the hour was almost up, Chuck told himself she wasn’t coming.

He was about to leave, when he felt a tap on the shoulder. The next thing he knew, someone had thrown their arms around him from behind.

Chuck started smiling. He turned around, and there she was — Diane.

“It was her,” he says today. “I could not believe it.”

A Crete connection

The spring that Chuck visited Crete, he was 26 years old, slightly adrift and inspired by a desire to travel and see the world — specifically, to see Greece.

He’d just finished an archaeology and anthropology degree and developed a fascination with the ancient world. Plus, his grandparents on both sides had emigrated from Greece to the US in the 1940s.

After flying into Athens, Chuck took a boat to Crete, to a little town called Agios Nikolaos. He fell for its sandy beaches and buzzy tavernas and decided to stick around for a while.

His goal of picking up freelance archaeological work proved trickier than expected. But Chuck enjoyed exploring solo and partying at youth hostels in the evening.

One day, just before midnight on May 25, 1985, Chuck was having a beer with a couple of fellow travelers in his youth hostel when he noticed a new arrival.

“In walks this tall, blonde girl … looking for a place to stay,” he recalls. “She glanced over at me and when our eyes met there was a connection I had never felt. We never really said anything to each other.”

This, of course, was Diane. Diane recalls being slightly flustered. She was concerned the youth hostel was about to close its doors for the night.

“I arrived there just before midnight — rushing in — the Greeks really stick to their rules of the doors being locked at 12 o’clock,” Diane tells CNN Travel today. “I got there at five to 12, and the doors were still open. He was standing in the entrance way with two girls and an Englishman … That’s how we first met.”

Diane recalls meeting Chuck’s gaze. She was instantly intrigued by him, but also “wary.”

She decided, from the way Chuck was surrounded by women, that he probably “thought he was a Greek god.”

Diane figured he flirted with all the girls in all the youth hostels, and so she didn’t take the extended eye contact seriously.

Plus, while the rest of the group were friendly and forthcoming, Chuck was “restrained, cool and quiet,” as Diane recalls.

She didn’t quite know what to make of him. But Diane wasn’t looking for a vacation romance in Europe. She was looking for an escape.

Escaping to Greece

Like Chuck, Diane was also 26. But while Chuck enjoyed a breezy existence back home in Massachusetts, characterized by nightclubs and traveling, Diane had already experienced some of life’s harsher realities back in South Africa.

In the 1980s, the country was still operating under apartheid — a system designed to give White South Africans unearned comfort while systematically crushing the Black majority.

While Diane grew up in a White family, she says she didn’t agree with the system.

And Diane was also going through personal challenges at the time she met Chuck.

“Unfortunately, it was a hard time in my life,” says Diane. “My significant other at the time had passed away. I decided to drop out of everything and go traveling, because I felt I needed to escape.”

In the wake of her grief, Diane recruited a girlfriend and boarded a plane from South Africa to Europe. The two women drove around the continent in a converted British ambulance. They enjoyed exploring for eight months, but then her friend had to go home. Diane sold the ambulance and decided to do a final stopover before returning to reality: Greece.

“I’d always had a love of Greek culture and Greek archaeology,” she says. “I knew I wanted to go to Crete to see the Minoan civilization.”

She planned to spend a few days on the island, exploring its ancient history, before going to the ruins of Troy, in Turkey. Diane didn’t expect to get especially close to anyone during her brief stay on the island.

But the morning after her midnight hostel arrival, she got chatting to Chuck properly.

“The next day, we definitely connected,” she says. “We spent a lot of time talking about our history, our past, and what we’d gone through.”

Diane surprised herself by opening up to Chuck about the death of her partner, and her time attempting to process this loss in Europe. He was a great listener and didn’t avert his gaze as she delved into difficult topics.

“Over those few days my original impression of him changed,” she says. “Chuck was an instant shoulder to lean on, I felt like I had known him forever.”

Chuck was also struck by how easy their conversation was.

“We’d sit on the beach and talk until the early morning,” says Chuck. “For me, it was a different connection. I don’t think I’d ever really taken the time to talk to anybody in that depth. It struck me: ‘This girl’s different.’”

The two also had a lot of fun together exploring.

“We travelled the island of Crete extensively — swam, went out to eat, hung out with other kids in the youth hostel,” recalls Chuck.

“And we danced,” says Diane. “We danced at the nightclub. We danced on the beach. We’d sleep on the beach, drink on the beach, we’d eat on the beach. We definitely connected.”

It was a special few days for both Chuck and Diane. But neither of them expected this surprise connection to continue beyond Crete.

Diane was especially wise to the realities of their situation.

“I had a lot of healing still to do, and he wasn’t even thinking about serious relationships. I could tell by the way he acted,” she says, “He was all about having fun.”

And there was the distance to contend with. Massachusetts and her home city of Pretoria felt worlds apart.

“So, it was kind of like … we’ll see what happens,” recalls Diane. “We’ll see what happens in the future.”

It was in this spirit that they both agreed to meet in a month’s time in Athens.

“He said, ‘On this day to this day, for a week, I’ll wait for you from 12 o’clock to 1 o’clock on the archaeological museum steps,’” recalls Diane. “‘Maybe we can meet, or maybe we can’t.’ I said, ‘Yeah, OK.’ I went off thinking I’d never see him again.”

Diane ended up having visa issues that kept her in Turkey two days longer than expected. She arrived at Athens’ Piraeus Port on the last day that Chuck had promised to wait.

“I rushed to try and make it at the last minute,” she recalls. “It was literally five minutes to one. I saw him sitting on the steps. I came up behind him. I put my hands over his eyes, and he jumped up. And there we were.”

The two spent a whirlwind 24 hours together in Athens before Chuck’s flight home to Boston.

“We spent what little time we had enjoying each other’s company and reveling in the fact that we were actually together again,” recalls Chuck.

“We had one day,” says Diane. “I was very excited to see him. I had struggled so hard to get back from Turkey, thinking it was definitely not going to happen, and I wouldn’t be there in time. I was very happy to see him.”

She was also pleasantly surprised that ladies’ man Chuck had kept to his word.

“It was a sign to me that, no matter how many naked beaches he could go on, he could still get his butt back to Athens to meet up with me and wait for me,” she says. “So that made my heart sing.”

This time, when they said goodbye, Diane and Chuck swapped addresses and contact details. They promised to stay in touch, but still with no expectation of what might come next.

Letter-writing while worlds apart

Back in South Africa, Diane struggled to adapt to her old life after her European escape. In Massachusetts, Chuck dropped archaeology and became a freelance photographer.

Diane busied herself at work. Chuck busied himself partying.

And to their mutual surprise, they stayed in touch.

“It was a long-distance, writing relationship,” says Chuck.

The letters weren’t regular. But they both loved the moment they saw each other’s handwriting on airmail envelopes on their doorstep.

They also enjoyed the occasional phone call. These moments of cross-continental connection reminded them how much they enjoyed confiding in each other.

“The way she could talk on the phone was just extraordinary,” says Chuck. “It was soothing and calming to me, and it was wonderful. It’s those phone calls through the next few years that kept me right there.”

As time passed, Chuck went out with other girls. But it was never serious. No one could compare to Diane.

“I was simply out to live life, and every one of my friends knew it, and all the girls I was with knew it,” he says.

He told his close friends about Diane, but “didn’t go into much detail … Except to say to a couple of people that I really, really like this girl, and I know she’s 8,000 miles away, but I’m staying in contact.”

Meanwhile, in Pretoria, Diane allowed herself to occasionally daydream about Chuck, while constantly reminding herself the odds were stacked against them.

“I was smart enough to know that he needed to sow his oats, and I was not looking for a relationship,” she says. “So, it was a connection with a ‘Let’s see what the future holds.’”

The months rolled into years.

“I was focused on studying, my family, my friends,” says Diane. “I certainly went out a lot with my girlfriends, but it took a while for me to start dating. But even then, always in the back of my mind, I thought of Chuck … The few gentlemen that I did go out with, I let them know that there was somebody in the US that I really liked, but I did not know what the future would hold.”

Then, one day, Chuck called Diane out of the blue. He told her he was booking a flight to visit her in South Africa.

“I said that I was coming by, if it was okay. She said, ‘Sure.’ And I made the 8,000 mile trip,” recalls Chuck.

It was the summer of 1987, two years since they’d met in Crete.

“I was excited and had a sense of determination to get back to the only girl that I had met that I felt I could be with,” recalls Chuck.

“I could not believe he was coming over with little notice,” says Diane. “I was excited and nervous.”

Diane briefed her loved ones ahead of time and introduced them to Chuck when he arrived.

“Well, my family and friends loved him,” Diane recalls. “They understood what I saw in him. His easygoing manner, sense of excitement and sharp wit surely entertained them.”

During Chuck’s fortnight in South Africa, the two traveled around Pretoria, Johannesburg, down to Durban and then to Kruger National Park, where they went on safari.

In between adventures, they talked. Their conversations were confirmation of what they already felt — this was an easy, special connection.

But then Chuck had to return to the US.

“We had a great time for two weeks and then I was off,” recalls Chuck. “The following year she visited me in April, and it rained the entire time. She said she would never live here, there is too much sun in South Africa …”

“It was wonderful seeing him,” says Diane. “But I couldn’t see myself living here at all.”

Plus in Massachusetts, Chuck was still living a party-heavy, late-20s lifestyle.

But a year later, in 1989, Chuck got in touch with Diane and was direct.

“I was on my way to my 31st birthday,” he recalls. “I wrote her a long letter stating I was done with my nightclub life and would she come here for good. We still have the letter. She said yes.”

For Diane, the long-distance connection helped her gradually adapt to the idea of being with Chuck more long-term, and gave her time to begin processing the loss of her partner. In the end, four years passed between their Crete meeting in 1985 and her move to the US in 1989.

“It worked out for us, as far as having a long-distance relationship that I could heal away from him, and give him time to build up,” she says. “He was young and carefree, and I felt like I was definitely not in the young and carefree mode at the time.”

Diane also had to negotiate the complications of growing close to someone while fearing she could lose them.

“It was a buildup on my end, of trusting him not to die on me,” she says.

A new chapter together

Moving to the US in January 1989 was a big step for Diane. She left her stable accountancy job in Pretoria and enrolled at the University of Massachusetts to set herself on the road to becoming a certified public accountant, or CPA, in the US. Chuck was still working as a freelance photographer. Life felt a little precarious.

There were also cultural differences to contend with. Diane’s South African apartheid childhood meant she was used to servants, so she’d never really done household chores.

“After leaving SA, it certainly made me realize the unjustness of the system,” she says. “While growing up in the system I was oblivious of any other system.”

The couple also occasionally struggled to adapt to cohabitating.

But the overwhelming emotion, for both Diane and Chuck, was happiness at finally being together.

“When Diane got here, it was all about her, and it really has been ever since,” says Chuck.

The couple continued to embrace their love of travel together, exploring the US and Europe.

“Whatever pennies we could pick up, we put towards traveling,” says Diane.

After almost a year living together in the US, Diane and Chuck made the decision to get married.

“We needed time to adjust to each other but both definitely wanted to be married,” says Chuck. “We were married on Valentine’s Day 1990.”

It was a small wedding celebration, with only close friends and family in attendance. Diane took Chuck’s name following the wedding, becoming Diane Pappas.

It was a special day for Diane and Chuck, but Chuck jokes that “the majority of the people felt we had a fairytale romance that was never going to last.”

As time passed, however, the couple settled into their life together and their fairytale romance became further grounded in reality.

“Within three years we had two daughters, bought a house, and Diane had her bachelor’s degree,” recalls Chuck. “We absolutely loved being parents to our two daughters, and we continued with our adventurous lifestyle with our children in tow.”

“We started to bring the girls to South Africa when they were three and five and have brought them back multiple times over the years,” says Diane.

The couple’s children inherited their love of travel — and their love of Greece. The family traveled there many times over the decades, and when Diane and Chuck’s oldest daughter got married a few years back, she decided to celebrate on the island of Paros.

‘Still together, still in love’

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of their meeting in 2025, Chuck and Diane went back to the island of Crete — this time accompanied by family, including their young granddaughter.

“Today, over 40 years later, we are still together, still in love,” says Chuck. “She is a full-fledged CPA with her own business and me with my own photography studio. For our anniversary we went back to that youth hostel where we had had that chance meeting on a Greek Island so long ago … all starting with a simple glance.”

The couple are now in their late 60s and still love traveling whenever they can — and they still enjoy long, deep chats.

“Communication is key to everything,” says Diane. “We have spent hours and hours of our lives talking every morning, talking every night at the end of the day, talking just about everything.”

When May 25 rolls around, the couple always talk about their hostel midnight meet-cute, and reflect on their decades together since.

“That’s the stuff like lotteries are made of,” says Chuck. “It’s a one in a million shot that something’s going to work or something’s going to happen — with this timing, the circumstances, the lifestyle, the countries …”

“As far as chance encounters, I think my feeling is you have to put yourself out there,” says Diane. “You have to remain open to opportunity.”

For Chuck the message of their love story is “don’t give up.”

He could have abandoned the plan to meet Diane on the steps of Athens’ archaeological museum. But something told him it was worth going each day, just in case.

“You never know if that chance that you take is the one that is going to pay off,” says Chuck. “And this one did.”

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