Imagine this, it's the summer of 1982, you're at the airport just outside of Washington DC and you're about to board a plane to London, England. That is, if you can actually make it on board.

We went standby and didn't know what standby meant back in those days. Had no clue what standby meant. We just got a good price on our tickets.

You and your best friend are waiting at the gate together. Your first ever international trip is about to begin. Hopefully, that is. There's no guarantee that you're going to be on this flight and you're watching others board one by one and the little knot of worry in your stomach starts to tighten. What if you just don't make it onto the flight?

I didn't know what you were supposed to do, because we were both in tears, determined to get on that flight, because we didn't, I'd never been out of the South, much less to a foreign country.

'This is Vickie, who back then was known as Vickie Moretz. Vickie was 22, freshly graduated, about to head off on a three-month-long summer work-study program in London with her best friend, Sandra.

So they took my girlfriend on first, and then they came out and said, we do have room for you. And they walked me all the way around the back of the plane, came around, tossed my luggage into a seat.

Vickiee's bag landed with a thud, right in someone's lap. She went to apologize and, plot twist.

It just so happened that they set me right next to my girlfriend and on the other side of her this young man and it was Graham.

'Enter Graham Kidner, a 22-year-old guy from Lancashire in the north of England who was flying back to the UK that day.

I was also on a standby ticket. I was just waiting for it to take off. These airline people walking up and down the aisle of the plane with walkie talkies reporting on where the empty seats were. And so first one young lady shows up and then another one and you know.

His lucky day.

'They had this get-together where they were, you know, surprised and happy to see each other because they'd got separated getting onto the plane.

'And just like that, Vickie and Graham's paths crossed for the first time. Two strangers seated together on a plane courtesy of standby serendipity. I'm Francesca Street, CNN Travel Journalist, and this is Chance Encounters, a podcast about the incredible connections we make while traveling. This show is based on my series of online articles for CNN.com, where I interview ordinary people about their extraordinary travel-based love stories and tales of friendship. In this podcast series we're chronicling the summer loves that turned out to be more than just a vacation romance. This week it's the early 1980s and we're flying across the Atlantic with Vickie Moretz and Graham Kidner, two 22 year olds whose lives were about to be changed, all thanks to a couple of last minute seats on the flight. Vickie and her friend Sandra were so happy to make it on board and all those nerves, all those stresses, they quickly melted away into excitement. It helped that Graham was the perfect seatmate. He told the girls all about how he'd just wrapped up his own post-college adventure. He'd saved up money, road-tripped across the US, and now, also flying standby, he was heading back to England to study to be a lawyer. Vickie liked Graham right away. He was easy to talk to, fun, charming. She figured he was perfect British love interest material. For her friend Sandra, that is.

'He had curly red hair back then. It was a perm. It wasn't real. My girlfriend adores curly-headed guys. I thought, oh good, Sandra's met her somebody.

Graham spent the entire flight chatting, giving the American girls a bit of a crash course in British history.

He talked all night long. We had the best laughs, of course, that's when they served alcohol on planes. He gave us the history of England. 1066 came up an awful lot, and I didn't even know what 1066 was until, when I left the plane, I knew everything that ever happened. And he was lovely. He was immediately a good friend. We were excited that he was gonna show us around, but I was thinking he was more for Sandra instead of me. And that quickly changed.

When the flight landed in London, Graham had to head on to his parents' home in the north of England. But before leaving, he made sure the girls got a proper London welcome.

We hadn't known each other for 12 hours and there we are at the Wimpy Burger and he took us for our first cup of tea because he insisted that we had to do the proper British tea like you would get one.

That was at Waterloo, wasn't it? Waterloo Station?

Yeah, I believe it was.

And then, it was time to say goodbye. Graham had to catch his train home. But before he left, he made a promise.

He said that he was gonna come to London and that he had a friend. And so his friend was going to show us around. And we were saying, oh no, cause he became our best friend. You know, we're thinking, oh, we hate leaving him.

And then Vickie dug out her film camera and she took her first ever London photograph.

So I took a picture of Sandra with him, and then on my camera, she took a pictures of Graham and I together. And ours, our heads are right up against each other, which is rather funny. And of course he took the same picture of Sandra and their heads are further apart. I guess it was looking ahead things to come.

And just like that Graham was gone, boarding that train north to Lancashire. And Vickie and Sandra, they were left wondering, was that goodbye forever? We'll find out after a break.

'This is Chance Encounters, I'm Francesca Street. Vickie Moretz had just had a life-changing meeting with Englishman Graham Kidner on a plane. But right now, Vickie still didn't know how life-changing this all was. She was focused on her first week working in a hotel in London, and she was experiencing some real culture shock.

You know, the Brits and Americans are so used to being together. It's very similar. And back then, we were really put under a microscope when we first arrived.

Vickie also found herself missing Graham. I couldn't wait for him to come back. Graham called up a university friend of his who lived in London, a guy called Jim. The next Saturday, he and Jim took Vickie and Sandra on a sightseeing tour around the city.

We were all running around. We had the best time. We were all just joking and laughing. We all got along so well.

In the afternoon, the group headed to Portobello Road, one of London's most famous street markets. It sells antiques, fruit and vegetables, and kind of everything in between. As they rode the escalator from the London Underground to the busy Market Street, Vickie and Graham found themselves standing side by side, kind of separated from the others. And then, suddenly, a stranger turned around. Studied them for a moment and made a bold prediction out of nowhere.

She said, you're both Scorpios. And of course, I said, yes, I am, of course I had no clue, I didn't really know anything about him. He said, well, I am too. She said, great love. You make great love, you're always going to be together. Well, we got the biggest kick out of that. We laughed, we got off, we couldn't wait to tell, you know, Sandra and Jim about it. We thought that was so funny.

But hearing that stranger's words shifted something in both Vickie and Graham.

By the end of that evening we were holding hands. And it just reached back and held my hand, and I took it, which would be unusual for me. I've done normally with them now, and it was just definitely meant to be.

Vickie and Graham's connection was so natural, so immediate, that even Sandra, who had, Vickie had correctly guessed this, quite liked Graham herself, felt nothing but happiness for them when they got together.

She was thrilled when we got together though.

'Vickie and Graham made the most of their summer romance in London together. They loved spending long days walking around the city's parks, drinking pints in the pub in the evening and swapping stories about their lives, their hopes and their dreams. But there was a potential end date looming. Vickie's work-study program was set to finish up in September and then she'd have to return to the U.S.

We knew that my time was gonna be coming to an end quickly. So you sort of had to act quickly. And so what do we do to get to see each other, to stay together? And I remember us saying, you know, we would have to get married, which was weird because we just graduated from university. It was the last thing on my mind, but he actually got the ring and I didn't know he had the ring. And he came in on July 4th. He came up to the room and said, you know, if we're gonna do this, we've got to do it right. And he got down on one knee and he asked me and he gave me the ring that he had purchased, which is so sweet. Gosh, it seems like yesterday, doesn't it?

Three months later, in December 1982, Graham and Vickie got married in the US and Graham met Vickie's entire family for the first time.

Obviously, I'd never even spoken to her mother before over the phone or anything. I met her for the first time here in Ohio, about 10 days for the wedding. And then we drove from there to Bristol, Tennessee and Virginia. Which is where her dad lives. She still lives today. I think it was two days before the wedding.

And his whole family came.

My folks came and my uncle and aunt and my sister and a friend from Canada.

Everybody loved him, and then after they met him, and they really liked the family too. They were all, everybody blended in.

Vickie took Graham's name when they got married, becoming Vickie Kidner, and she and Graham spent the next two years living in the UK while Graham completed his law studies. But in time, Vickie and Graham relocated to the US. That's where they brought up their two kids, though Graham always brought some UK influences into the home as well. The couple also stayed close with their friends Sandra and Jim over the decades too.

London will always have a place in my heart. I loved London. I didn't wanna leave my family as much. I wasn't used to it. I remember that was the first time I'd ever been out of the country or out of the South. So I hated leaving my family and Graham said, that's fine. We'll just go visit, you know, we'll visit England.

Obviously, you've been together for over 40 years, so what would you say has kind of kept you together and kept your relationship strong for those years? And what's the secret?

You have to enjoy being together because most of the marriage is, you know, you're doing nothing and you have to sort of enjoy doing nothing together as well as enjoying doing things together and we both had common interests of travel.

Yeah, we like to travel and whether it's just locally just going out for a drive, you know, in the country locally or, you know, the more elaborate overseas holidays and things like that.

Yeah, we're just sitting in front of the farm and reading a book or, or you marry a friend. It's about finding somebody you can be a friend with and you stick with it.

Looking back at when you first met and thinking about that moment, but how do you feel about it now and how do feel about the coincidences and the chance element that led you together?

So much in life is chance, is being at the right place, or for some people the wrong place at the wrong time. I mean, you know, you can plan a lot in life, obviously, you plan education, plan a career, you can planned various things, but some things you can't plan, and some things just happen.

Some things are meant to be. Some things there must be because it brought us together on a plane where we were all stand by and where Sandra and I have been told we weren't even going to get aboard originally and then next thing you know where not only one of us but both of us are led aboard and sitting next to him.

And remember that photo of Vickie and Graham from that first night in London just after Vickie had had tea for the first time? Well of course that's framed in pride of place in their house.

My son gets the biggest kick out of that because he said, do you know how weird it is that you all had known each other less than 12 hours and you would have a picture made together, you know. We met when we were 22 years old, 23, when we got married. And now we're 63. Hard to believe. It was all strange as if it was all meant to be.

'Thank you to Vickiee and Graham Kidner for sharing their chance encounter. If you have your own chance encounter to share, I'd love to hear it. You can share your story with CNN in the contact form linked in our episode description. This is Chance Encounters, reported, hosted, and written by me, Francesca Street. Dan Bloom is our showrunner and co-writer. Sofía Sánchez and Kyra Dahring are the producers. Dan Dezula is technical director, and Matt Dempsey is technical production manager. Steve Lickteig is executive producer of CNN Podcasts. For more chance encounters, check out cnn.com/travel. CNN Travel's global editor is Barry Neild. Special thanks to producers Lori Galarreta, Felicia Patinkin, Graelyn Brashear, Haley Thomas, Lauren Kim, Grace Walker, and Jesse Remedios. Jamus Andrest created the artwork for this show. We had support from Alex Manasseri, Mark Duffy, Robert Mathers, Joey Salvia, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Lisa Namerow, David Allan, and the team at CNN Travel. Wendy Brundige is CNN Digital's SVP of Content Strategy. Chance Encounters is a production of CNN Podcasts. Thank you for listening.