About this episode

Listeners share their love stories, featuring tales of romance from different backgrounds and eras.

Now it’s your turn to share. A bonus episode to end our Love Stories series where you tell the world how your true love grew. Fiona Smiley Wright got in touch about an extraordinary romance that was hiding right under her nose for most of her life, growing up in Northern Ireland. It wasn’t until her parents passed away that Fiona and her three brothers discovered years of love letters between them, while separated by war. Fiona tells Asya the tale of a silver cigarette box that her mother Elizabeth gifted to her father Tom, a surgeon, before he departed for Singapore during World War Two, and how it was crucial in ensuring their love survived. In the summer of 1983, Hana Keplova, a talented singer studying at Prague University, stayed in a family home in England en route to taking part in a choral festival. Over breakfast she meets Andrew Johnston, the twinkly-eyed son of her host family. The two became pen pals and Andrew made a surprise visit to the then-communist state of Czechoslovakia, and kept on coming back. After encounters with secret police and heated debates on long walks in the countryside, the pair slowly fell in love. They married in 1989, the same year the Iron…

More episodes of Lives Less Ordinary

• Love Stories: The matchmaker · August 30, 2026 · 39 min
• Love Stories: Our own romcom · August 23, 2026 · 40 min
• Love Stories: My two husbands · August 16, 2026 · 46 min
• Love Stories: Do you remember me? · August 9, 2026 · 42 min
• Love Stories: Finding you in a warzone · August 2, 2026 · 45 min
• Introducing: Love Stories · July 30, 2026 · 2 min

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