They were each other’s first crush when they were 8. Then they reunited 20 years later

For years, life kept bringing childhood sweethearts Kris Brock and Amelie Malmfält together, and then splitting them apart again. Then, one day, Amelie got a message from Kris out of the blue that changed everything. (Courtesy Kris and Amelie Brock via CNN Newsource)

Amelie Malmfält opened the message at work. When she saw Kris Brock’s name, her face broke out into a huge smile. She couldn’t believe it.

It was a simple note — he’d bumped into her parents at the airport, he said. He was wondering how she was doing. It’d been a while…

Still smiling, Amelie immediately started composing a reply in her head.

“My colleague across from me said, ‘Did you get some good news or something?’” recalls Amelie. “I was like, ‘Oh, yes … kind of.’”

The colleague looked intrigued, so Amelie continued.

“This boy, who I knew when I was eight … and then we were together when I was 18 … just reached out to me to say he bumped into my parents at the airport,” she said.

“Wait, who is this guy?” asked her colleague, confused.

“This is the person I’m going to marry one day,” replied Amelie, still smiling.

Amelie’s colleague raised an eyebrow. She was surprised. She knew Amelie was dating someone else. Amelie, too, was surprised by her words. But then she doubled down on what she’d just said.

“No, this is the one I’ll definitely marry,” she said, as her mind wandered back to where it all began.

Childhood sweethearts

Amelie and Kris’ story began in 1987. Amelie’s parents were Swedish, and as a kid she attended a Swedish elementary school in London. It was a tiny institution, with only 10 kids in her class.

“So you kind of had to get on with everyone, which was nice,” Amelie tells CNN Travel today. “There was pretty much an even split of boys and girls, and the 10 of us just hung out the whole time and had loads of fun.”

Kris joined the school the year Amelie was eight. From the moment he walked into the classroom for the first time, Amelie was fascinated by him.

“I just remember when this really exotic Swedish boy who’d lived in Australia arrived one day with this bright yellow jumper, saying ‘Sydney’ on it,” she says. “He quickly became part of a friendship group.”

For Kris, joining a new school was a bit daunting — even if he was used to new beginnings.

“I’d moved around a lot — to Asia, Hong Kong and Sydney, and then I came to the UK, to the Swedish school,” he tells CNN Travel today. “I was a bit nervous — starting a new school when you’re eight years old.”

But when Kris met Amelie, his nerves quickly turned into excitement. It was love at first sight — kind of, anyway.

“We were only eight, but I remember Amelie was the first person that I thought, ‘Wow.’ You know, whatever you feel when you’re eight years old. It was pretty innocent.”

One lunchtime, the kids were playing tag in the playground. Kris was “it” and was chasing the other kids, trying to tap them on the shoulder and tag them.

“I thought it was really clever to run into the classroom, and then I closed the door, which was this big glass door, but I also locked it, which Kris didn’t realize,” recalls Amelie.

Kris ran after Amelie to tag her, and tried to push the door open.

“But the door was locked, so he flew through the whole glass window, crashed through the whole glass door and flew through it,” recalls Amelie.

Other than a few scratches, Kris was unharmed. But Amelie was left impressed by his commitment to the game.

“And then the next day, there was a little note on my desk, saying, ‘Will you be my girlfriend? Tick yes or no.’ And I was like, ‘He flew through a glass door. I think I should say yes.’”

On their first date, the eight-year-olds went to the cinema to see the rereleased “Herbie goes to Monte Carlo.”

“My father was sitting a couple of rows behind us, so we weren’t alone at the cinema,” says Kris.

He remembers loving the film, starring the Volkswagen Beetle, and loving watching Amelie laugh at the jokes.

Amelie had a great time too.

“My mom drove a pink Beetle. I think that’s why Kris chose the movie — he knew I was going to like it, because I liked Beetles,” she recalls. “I just remember it being super fun. It was so innocent, like it is when you’re eight-years-old. But I definitely knew I had a crush.”

Afterwards, Kris’ dad took the two to a McDonald’s. It was the perfect kid day out.

Shortly after, Amelie attended Kris’ ninth birthday, along with all the other children in the class. One of the activities involved the attendees drawing on a bed sheet with permanent markers. They wrote their names, drew pictures, doodled.

Kris’ mother figured the bedsheet would be a nice memento for Kris — because by that time, the Brock family was set to be leaving London for Switzerland. It’s commonplace for kids at international schools to come and go, but Kris and Amelie were both crushed at the idea of going their separate ways.

“I remember being really sad when Kris was leaving,” says Amelie. “It’s a big deal when you’re nine years old and your crush moves away. At that age you’re not also necessarily at the stage where you write too many letters, or keep in contact so much. And our parents weren’t sort of socially in the same group, so it wasn’t like they were going to stay in contact either.”

Still, even as a kid Amelie was convinced this wasn’t the end. She figured despite the obstacles, they’d probably get married one day. She practised her signature, imagining being “Amelie Brock.”

In his new home in Switzerland, homesick Kris slept on the bedsheet he’d decorated with his friends on his ninth birthday.

“I always wanted Amelie’s drawing to be where my head was,” he says.

A teenage reunion

Time moved on, Amelie and Kris grew up, becoming teenagers, busy with new friends and new crushes, but still thinking fondly of each other from time to time.

Amelie remained close with her childhood best friend, who’d also had a crush on one of the boys in the class at the Swedish School.

“The two of us would talk about my crush and her crush from the same class all the time,” recalls Amelie. “Over the years, we would always sort of joke a little bit and wonder what they were up to and stuff like that.”

By then, it was the mid-90s. Email was becoming more of a thing, but there was no social media to allow Amelie to keep track of Kris from afar. She daydreamed about him sometimes, imagining what teenage Kris was like, but with no way of finding out.

“Obviously life goes on, and you do all sorts of things through your teenage years, but there was definitely something that just lingered there that made me think, ‘Let’s try to see if we can reignite something at a reunion,’” she says.

The Swedish School 10 year reunion was an idea cooked up by Amelie and her best friend in 1997, the year they turned 18. They were both in Sweden for the summer, working summer jobs before starting college.

“We decided, ‘Let’s organize this reunion. We should be able to figure out how to get these 10 people in one place again,’” she recalls.

They quizzed their parents for phone numbers and most recent addresses. A lot of the families had moved around in the decade that had passed, but many had bases in Sweden. Amelie tracked down the landline phone number for the Brock family’s Swedish summer house, and nervously dialed in the digits.

To her relief, Kris and his family were at home.

“The phone rang, and my mother answered it and said, ‘Okay, I think you better take this call,’” recalls Kris. “So I took the call, and it was Amelie, calling on an old landline to organize this reunion. I was on the west coast of Sweden, and the reunion was going to be in Stockholm in a couple of days. And I said, ‘Yes.’”

Like Amelie, Kris had spent the previous decade occasionally wondering what had happened to his first crush. He was intrigued at the idea of her seeing her again, and planned to stay in Stockholm for a couple of days.

Amelie told him the name of the store she was working in, and suggested he could call in to say hello when he arrived in town.

“It wasn’t the age of Facebook, see, or Instagram, where you could secretly stalk people and see what was happening in their lives,” says Amelie. “I had no idea what he was going to look like, but as soon as he walked into the shop, I just knew straight away that it was Kris.”

Kris recognized Amelie too, standing behind the counter. The two stood for a moment, just smiling at each other.

“It was really special,” says Amelie. “I just knew. Straight away I was like, ‘Oh my god. He’s really hot now.’”

Kris waited for Amelie’s shift to finish, and then they went to dinner. As they were chatting, updating each other on their lives and college plans, Kris leant across the table and asked Amelie a question:

“Can I hold your hand?”

She smiled and nodded, happily.

“So we held hands at dinner,” says Amelie. “I had so many butterflies. It was super, super fun.”

“We fell instantly back in love,” says Kris.

After dinner, the two went to the movies again.

“We watched ‘Scream’ — the original ‘Scream’ which nowadays seems pretty funny, because it’s a weird movie, but when it came out, it was a pretty big deal,” says Kris. They held hands during all the scary moments.

The next day, Kris and Amelie attended the school reunion arm-in-arm. They spent the rest of Kris’ time in Stockholm together.

“It was a little summer fling,” says Amelie. “It felt great to meet him again, but I don’t think we, either of us, realized it would turn into a full relationship.”

“A couple of days before I was going to go, we were lying in the park, talking,” recalls Kris. “I was going to literally go and travel the world — I had a gap year, a job in Mexico lined up — the whole shebang. Amelie was going to Kingston University in the UK to study art. And I was like, ‘This is not going to work.’ So I said, ‘Screw Mexico. I’ll move to London.’”

That September, Amelie started college and Kris began a year working as a chef at a pub in London’s Earl’s Court. They spent all their spare time together.

“It just very quickly turned very serious and felt really right — and sort of like we’d always known each other, which we had, when we were young and so little,” says Amelie. “There were so many things that just felt very familiar, very comforting.”

I’ve always loved him, Amelie thought to herself, as she walked down London streets hand-in-hand with Kris. But this, at 18, was a “totally different kind of love.”

Over the next year, Amelie got to know Kris’ parents and brother and sister. She and Kris also spent time with her parents, who loved him.

It felt meant to be. But after a year, Kris had to leave the UK to return to Switzerland and begin his degree. Amelie and Kris promised to stay together, but they found the distance tough.

“It’s hard when you’re at that age, doing long distance,” says Amelie. “But we definitely gave it our very, very best.”

For about six months, the two traveled back and forth between Switzerland and London. It got gradually harder rather than easier, and three more years of college stretched ahead of them.

“It was hard because I couldn’t settle in properly at university, because I was always thinking, ‘When can we see each other?’” says Amelie. “It was Kris’ final decision that we were going to end it. I was really heartbroken, although I realized it just really wasn’t working, and it wasn’t fun doing the long distance.”

Breaking up felt extra hard because they hadn’t fallen out of love. Circumstances and life had pulled them apart.

“I was absolutely heartbroken, because I really did think at the time this was going to be forever, like you do, I think, with any sort of big loves,” says Amelie.

She talked through her feelings with her best friend from school, the one who’d helped her plan the reunion.

“You never know what might happen,” said her friend. And Amelie held onto that sentiment.

“I kind of kept having that attitude: ‘You never know. Maybe this just isn’t the time for us,’” she says. “But then you try to move on as well. University are fun years.”

Kris also stood by the “if it was meant to be, it will be” attitude. But he knew that he and Amelie needed to cut contact for a while if they wanted any chance of being happy while in college.

“So, was pretty much cold turkey, and we weren’t in each other’s lives for quite some time,” he says. “Almost 10 years.”

Amelie graduated and started working in London. Kris finished up his studies and worked in Switzerland. They both forged their own paths.

“Amelie built her own life, moved in with someone. I built my own life,” says Kris. “But the thought was always there. No disrespect to the other people, but I always thought, ‘If the day I die, if I hadn’t ended up with Amelie, it just wouldn’t have felt complete.’”

10 years later

It was that sentiment that prompted Kris to reach out to Amelie on Facebook after he bumped into her parents in the airport.

It was 2007. Amelie and Kris were in their late 20s.

“As soon as I got that message from Kris, I just knew if it’s ever going to happen, this is going to be the time,” says Amelie. “I knew, really, by then that my relationship needed to finish and it wasn’t going anywhere.”

Amelie ended things with her partner. Kris was also newly single. They started messaging back and forth. The messages were friendly, but not really flirty. Neither was quite sure what the other was looking for. The stakes felt higher than when they were 18. Both were settled in their respective countries and paths.

“I was happy with my career. Had a fantastic social circle, we just had so much fun. London itself was also just such a great part of those years,” says Amelie. “But I wasn’t happy relationship-wise. And when the two of us connected, I realized that this could be our future.”

She started imagining a life with Kris, even though she hadn’t seen him in person for a decade.

“You start thinking, ‘I do want something for forever. I do want this with someone super special that I can share life with.’ And to be able to do that with somebody that you’ve known for so long, although in such totally different stages in life, just felt like it was always meant to be…”

When Kris planned a trip to London to see Amelie, this idea of “meant to be” was ringing around both their heads.

“It was exciting, nerve-wracking, butterflies…” recalls Kris.

But seeing each other again just felt “like coming home,” he says.

He spoke to his mother about Amelie before he traveled to the UK.

“I asked Mom, ‘How do you know it’s the right person?’ And Mom always said, ‘Well, you know, it feels like you’re coming home.’”

When he saw Amelie again, Kris understood exactly what she meant. The two jumped back into a relationship like they’d never left off. They started flying back and forth to visit each other in London and Switzerland. This continued for over a year, until Kris’ work moved him to Stockholm.

Kris’ move prompted a conversation.

“It came down to, ‘Are we going to go all in or not?’” recalls Kris. “It felt like, ‘This is the right time. This is it. It’s now or never.’ And Amelie made the brave decision to move to Sweden to be with me.”

For Amelie, this was a big change, but it was a gamble she wanted to take.

“It was a huge thing to leave everything in London, which was where I’d built my entire life,” she says. “But when Kris said he was going to move to Sweden for a job, I just thought, ‘Well, either we try this or it’s never going to happen.’”

Amelie was also excited at the prospect of living in Sweden, “being Swedish, but never having properly lived there.”

Kris had also never really lived in Sweden as an adult. It felt like a chance for them both to explore somewhere new. And Kris and Amelie’s friends and loved ones were supportive of their new chapter together.

“I think our parents also weren’t hugely surprised when we said that we had re-ignited and met again. I think they were both equally very happy about it,” says Amelie.

“And although it was strange living together and having all of a sudden this actual grown up life, it just felt like it was always meant to be. We just slotted into each other’s lives very easily.”

Building a life together

Amelie quickly got a job and formed a social circle in Stockholm. She and Kris enjoyed exploring the city together and building their life together.

A few years later, on a trip to Australia, Kris proposed at a clifftop hotel.

“We hadn’t talked about marriage and engagement so much, but I think it was sort of subtly understood that this was just our forever,” says Amelie. “So when it happened, I was totally surprised, I wasn’t expecting it at all, although I already knew this was the man I wanted to be with forever.”

They welcomed their first child not long after, and then got round to planning the wedding in Ibiza, Spain, on a beautiful terrace with a view of the ocean. Their friends and family from across the world gathered to celebrate them.

“Swedish weddings are always very heavy on the speeches,” says Kris. “So we had a lot of speeches, and a lot of them referred, as I did in my speech, to the whole history behind us.”

Perhaps most memorably, Kris’ mother surprised the couple with the bedsheet they’d decorated at Kris’ ninth birthday.

“When we went back to our room after the wedding, she had got the hotel to remake the bed with this sheet, because she had kept it, which we had no idea,” says Kris.

He hadn’t seen the sheet since he was little.

“Perhaps she had an inkling,” says Amelie, who took Kris’ name following the wedding, becoming Amelie Brock. “She’d kept it all those years.”

A couple of years later, Kris and Amelie welcomed their second child, a daughter.

“Then, in 2016, we followed our hearts again and moved to Sydney,” says Kris.

It was a big decision, but one they were both excited about. They felt it was the right choice for their young family.

“We both moved around a lot growing up, and it’s something that’s in our blood, probably … We both think that seeing the world is the best education for the children, and it’s just an adventure,” says Kris.

The couple did wonder if history was repeating itself, though, when their young son told them the timing of the move wasn’t great, because he’d just asked a girl in his class in Sweden to marry him.

“And our daughter — her absolute best, best, best, best friend was a boy at the time, and we would go back and see him all the time. They still have contact as well, so who knows,” says Amelie, laughing.

‘Meant to be’

Over the past decade, Amelie and Kris have navigated life’s ups and downs together from their home in Sydney.

“We became Australian citizens, built a life we are proud of, raised two beautiful children,” says Kris. “And along the way, I overcame a brain tumour.”

Kris was diagnosed with this tumor in 2020.

“It was a benign tumor that was removed,” he says. “But obviously it was a big thing, and a big thing for the family.”

“It was definitely a few hard years when Kris had his brain tumor, the recovery part of that, without having any family here…” says Amelie. “Because it was Covid, we weren’t able to have any of his family come visit at the time at all. But we did have a fantastic group of friends. A group of friends becomes your extended family during those harder times.”

Kris says this period reinforced to the couple “what’s important in life.”

Kris and Amelie see themselves staying in Australia for now, at least until their kids finish high school. But after that, they might embrace their shared wanderlust and move somewhere new.

Wherever they go, what’s constant is they’ll be together. They’re both committed to a lifetime together.

“When you’ve gone through so many different chance encounters, and so many different stages together, you want to work harder at it,” says Amelie. “Because it could have not happened. The reunion might not have happened. He could have not reached out on Facebook. There’s so many different things that have happened for a reason. Call it fate. Call it whatever you want, but it seems like it was always meant to be.”

“And the result is two fantastic kids and us being together,” says Kris. “Today, we live our fairytale life — with the same fairytale partner I first met when I was eight years old.”

By Francesca Street, CNN