Günther is 70 years old, a retired civil engineer from a small town near Hamburg. He has three adult children, six grandchildren, a garden he tends obsessively, and — since November — a relationship built almost entirely on handwritten letters.
This is his story. We share it here with his and Elke's permission, and with the small details slightly adjusted to protect their family's privacy.
The Last Letter Before Elke
The last love letter Günther wrote was in 1978. He was 24. He wrote it to a woman named Marlis on the night before he left for six weeks of engineering fieldwork in the north. He proposed in that letter. Marlis said yes by postcard. They were married the following spring.
Marlis died in the autumn of 2022, after forty-three years of marriage and a long illness. Günther grieved quietly and thoroughly for almost two years. He did not date. He did not look. His children worried.
In early 2025, one of his granddaughters — 19 years old, studying in Berlin — set up a profile for him on our platform without telling him. "Opa," she said, "you can delete it tomorrow. Just try." He left it there, intending to delete it, and then Elke's profile appeared.
Why He Wrote Instead of Messaging
Elke is 68. A retired teacher. She lives two hours away, in a village near Lüneburg. Her profile mentioned that she still read her late mother's letters, kept in a wooden box on top of the piano.
Günther read that line three times. Then, instead of sending her a message through the app, he did something none of his children would have believed possible. He took out a sheet of thick cream paper. He wrote her a letter. By hand. Two pages.
He asked our team for her postal address through the profile. Elke, when contacted, said yes — she was curious about the man who had asked permission rather than slid into her inbox.
His first letter arrived on a Tuesday. She wrote back the following Monday. They have written to each other at least once a week ever since, with phone calls sprinkled in and visits every third weekend.
What the Letters Changed
We asked Günther what the letters did to his heart that messages would not have.
"A letter takes three days to arrive. In those three days you imagine her reading it. You cannot take back a sentence. You have to be honest or you have to start over. At 70, I don't want to start over. So I was honest."
And Elke, we asked, why did she say yes to the first visit?
"Because his handwriting was nervous. You cannot fake nervous handwriting. It told me he was real before I met him."
The First Visit
Three months into the letters, Günther took a train to Lüneburg. Elke met him at the station. They had exchanged maybe fourteen letters by then. They had never video-called. She had only ever seen three photos of him — all from the profile.
"I recognized him," she told us. "Not from the pictures. From the coat. He had described the coat in a letter."
They walked to a café. They talked for four hours. He took a later train home. The next letter from him arrived on Friday. It began: "I have been rereading our afternoon all week. I hope you are as well."
What the Grandchildren Think
Günther has six grandchildren. The youngest is seven. The oldest — the one who set up the profile — is 19.
They are, without exception, delighted. The seven-year-old was recently given one of Elke's letters to read. She announced at dinner: "Opa has a girlfriend and she writes like the queen."
His adult children took slightly longer. One of his sons, he told us, was quietly upset for about six weeks. Then Günther invited the family to Sunday lunch, and Elke came for the first time. By dessert, his son was asking her about her teaching career. By coffee, he was laughing.
"He was protecting his mother's memory," Günther told us. "That's what good sons do. And when he saw that Elke was not replacing her, but simply being herself, he relaxed."
Why This Works at 70 in a Way It Might Not at 30
We asked both of them what age had taught them about this pace.
Elke was clear: "At 30 I would have been too impatient for letters. At 70, I have time, and I know time is precious. A contradiction, yes. But that is what age does."
Günther added: "At 70 you are not trying to build a life. You are trying to share the one you already built. That is a different kind of courtship. Letters are the right speed for it."
The Small Logistics
For readers wondering: yes, they exchanged phone numbers after the second letter, and yes they use them. But both of them report that the texts are for logistics — which train, what time, did you get home safely — and the letters are for the heart.
They have not yet discussed moving in together. Neither is in a hurry. They are both keeping their own houses. They travel between them. In November, exactly one year after the first letter, they are planning a small trip to the Frisian coast — together, but each booking their own room at a guesthouse. Elke insists on this, and Günther respects it.
What We Learned From Them
Three things, quietly, from watching this couple over the last year.
- Slower is not weaker. A relationship built on three-day letter delays has more intimacy at month six than most built on instant messaging do at year two.
- Your handwriting is the most honest thing about you. Elke was right. You cannot fake it. Try, this week, and see.
- It is never too late to write one letter. Günther's first letter to Elke was his first love letter in forty-six years. It found its reader in eight days.
Somewhere in your drawer, there is probably a fountain pen you stopped using twenty years ago. Pick it up. Write to someone. Even if you never send the letter, your handwriting will remember things your keyboard forgot.
