Like a plot ripped straight from a Nicholas Sparks novel, the BBC reports that a UK man finally married his ex-fiancee after a lost love letter he wrote to her 10 years ago was recently discovered behind a fireplace in her mother's villa.

Steve Smith met Carmen Ruiz-Perez in 1993 when the pair was both 25 and she was an Spanish exchange student living in Devon, England.

The two were briefly engaged, but the relationship fell apart after Ruiz-Perez moved to Paris to run a boutique.

Five years later, in 1998, Smith located the address of Ruiz-Perez's mother in Spain and sent a short love letter, despite thinking that his former love had moved on. Read: Long Live Love Letters!

"I hope you are well. I was just writing to ask if you ever married and if you ever still thought of me?" the letter read. "It would be great to hear from you, please get in touch if you can. Steve XXX."

The correspondence was left on a fireplace mantelpiece and forgotten, eventually falling behind it. It was not until Ruiz-Perez's mother was doing renovations to the villa that the letter was unearthed by workmen. She forwarded it on to her daughter, who then decided to call her old sweetheart after 16 years of separation.

"When I got the letter I didn't phone Steve right away because I was so nervous," Ruiz-Perez told a local newspaper. "I nearly didn't phone him at all. I kept picking up the phone then putting it down again. But I knew I had to make the call."

As fate would have it, Smith had kept his old number and neither had married. The two, now 42, met again in Paris and rekindled their romance. Read: 10 Greatest Love Stories Of All Time

"When we met at the airport it was like a film. We ran across the airport into each other's arms ... Finding each other again was fate. It is one of those things that was meant to be," Smith said.

The couple was married this past Friday in England.

"I never got married, and now I've married the man I have always loved," said the newlywed Mrs. Carmen Smith.

As the world becomes increasingly digitized, we fear these kinds of love stories will become rarer and rarer. Smith and Ruiz-Perez hail from the last generation to really rely on handwritten correspondences as a practical form of communicating. And unfortunately, e-mails, text messages and instant messaging just don't have the same heart-wrenching flavor. 

While the death of the traditional love letter certainly could be something to lament, maybe we're wrong. Do you know of any stirring tales of romance (complete with twists of fate) that have played out via the digital world? Read: 7% In U.S. Have Rekindled Love Using The Internet