NEED TO KNOW
- Amanda and Michael Cincinati dated throughout high school, but broke up after graduation
- Over the next few decades, he carried a ticket stub from a movie they went to together in his wallet, while she says her family members talked about how they wished she’d married him
- When they finally reconnected, both felt like no time had passed — and they quickly began making up for lost time
On Friday, June 5, high school sweethearts Michael and Amanda Cincinati eloped, but making it down the aisle was a journey that took decades.
“First love is really something special,” says Amanda Cincinati, 48-year-old registered nurse who lives in Myrtle Beach, S.C. “When you have the experience of real, true love, you’ll never be able to duplicate that feeling again. To have that feeling reignited again, I realize that he was my true soulmate all along.”
Amanda and Michael Cincinati, now 49, attended rival high schools in rural West Virginia and began dating after a mutual friend introduced them.
“I loved him so so much,” Amanda recalls.
The feeling was mutual. “I would look at her and say, ‘How are you in love with me?’ ” Michael recalls, saying he couldn’t believe his luck.
After dating throughout their junior and senior years of high school, they broke up a few months after high school graduation in the fall of 1995 following a fight that Amanda says seems “stupid” in hindsight.
The following summer, still broken up, he asked to see her the night before he left for Navy bootcamp.
Courtesy of Amanda Price
He started to propose, he had a pear-shaped solitaire ring and everything, but Amanda stopped him. Yes, she loved him, but they were so young, she says — and he was leaving.
“I said, “Please don’t do this,’ ” Amanda recalls. “I didn’t want to say yes, but I didn’t want to say no to him because I still loved him.”
“He still gave me the ring and asked me to hold onto it, and I cried the whole way home,” Amanda recalls.
Although she “actually wore it for a while” and he wrote her a letter during boot camp, a reunion wasn’t in the cards. She didn’t write him back and his sister eventually came to get the ring.
Courtesy of Amanda Price
A few years later, when he was home on leave, they went on a dinner date. He called after and said how much he appreciated being given a second chance, but a guy she was seeing at the time deleted the message and sent one back saying, “Leave me alone.”
“He was devastated,” Amanda says. “And I was like, ‘Oh great, he left me again.’ ”
Still, over the years, whenever he was in their hometown and ran into her parents or a mutual friend, he asked about her.
“I always wondered about her,” says Michael, who retired from the Navy as a chief petty officer. “I’d think about my first love and the happy times we had together and wonder what my life would be like now.”
In fact, he kept a ticket stub from a movie they went to together in his wallet and carried it with him for 30 years.
“It’s literally the only thing I had left from us,” he says. “When I graduated from boot camp, I laminated it and kept it all these years.”
Courtesy of Amanda Price
The pair ended up reconnecting again after Michael found her on Facebook in Dec. 2024 and sent her a friend request.
At the time, they were both divorced with kids — she has three, he has four — and living in different states, but two months of messaging later, they agreed to meet face-to-face the day before Valentine’s Day 2025.
When she hugged him, it felt like home.
“It was just natural, comfortable,” Amanda says. “It’s a relief to 100 percent be yourself.”
“It felt like no time had passed and we were both 18 again,” adds Michael. “She’s my dearest love and my best friend rolled into one.”
Over the years, Amanda says her family members often said they wished she had married him — and that’s exactly what they did on Friday, June 5, tying the knot in St. Augustine, Fla.
At the time, her parents were having a lot of serious health issues, which is why the couple decided to elope. Fortunately, when their happy day rolled around, both her parents felt enough to travel and surprised her by making the trip.
Her father officiated while her mother stood by the happy couple as they exchanged vows.
“I tell her all the time: I’m always afraid I’m going to wake up,’ ” Michael says. “This is like one of those dreams when you win the lottery.”
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Now the couple is planning a honeymoon to Signal, Italy — the first place he was stationed in the Navy — and they are elated to be spend as much time together as possible.
Adds Michael, “I mean, we’ve got 30 years to make up for.”
