(CNN) --
The first time Anthony Sall saw Barbara Olle, he was "blown away."
It was the summer of 1969. Anthony was a 28-year-old American college student shying away from family expectations to explore the world.
Anthony had turned down his father's offer to work at his successful family business in order to spend the better part of five years traveling.
In 1969, Anthony was nearing the end of his journey, unaware that his most life-changing chapter was about to begin.
The first time Anthony saw Barbara, he was in line for the ferry at the port of Athens, waiting to board for the Greek island of Mykonos.
"He had a way of being that stood out on its own, and I was immediately captivated and drawn to it," Anthony tells CNN Travel.
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Barbara grew up in communist East Germany, but escaped to West Germany with her family when she was 10 years old.
She later attended a boarding school in Switzerland.
Barbara's upbringing gave her an international outlook, and as an adult she enjoyed sojourns in Paris and London.
In the summer of 1969, she had just turned 24 and had her dream job: a flight attendant for Air France.
The flight attendant job suited her like a glove.
"Meeting people, being in a different country on each trip with my airline friends -- on an African safari, walking the Champs-Elysees in Paris, going to my favorite hair salon in Frankfurt -- I could go on and on," he says. Barbara told CNN Travel.
That summer, Barbara and her friend Evelyn were making the most of a week off.
"We decided to go to Greece, which at the time was a very affordable, sunny and warm country," Barbara recalls.
When Anthony saw Barbara at the ferry port, she was holding a ticket to another island: Hydra.
Barbara was clearly headed for Mykonos, so on a whim, Anthony changed his ticket there.
In 1969, Barbara Olle was a flight attendant for Air France.
She loved her job and flying for a living.
Credit: Anthony and Barbara Sall
Anthony had hoped to speak to Barbara on the ferry, but it turned out that she was traveling second class and he was traveling third.
There were barriers separating each section.
And not only that, apparently Anthony had competition.
The day before, Barbara had met a Greek in Athens, near the Acropolis, and he had invited her to dinner.
"To get away, I said, 'Okay, we'll meet,' but of course I never went," Barbara recalls.
"The next morning, I go with my friend to the port to catch the ferry to Mykonos, and we're standing in line and someone taps me on the back. I turn around and it's this Greek guy."
On the Mykonos ferry, the Greek invited Barbara and Evelyn to have lunch with him in first class.
The two friends agreed: although Barbara was not interested in him romantically, she enjoyed meeting people on her trips.
On the other side of the ship, Anthony was watching all this and wondering how he was going to manage to meet Barbara.
Meanwhile, he was chatting with a young American couple, Alan and Lili, who were sitting with him in third class.
He told them that he had been instantly captivated by Barbara and that he was looking forward to talking to her.
Anthony's new friends encouraged his search, and before long the three of them were stealthily climbing over the fences that separated third, second, and first classes.
"Suddenly Tony appeared, having jumped all the fences on the ship," Barbara recalls.
She was amused by his tenacity.
At last the long-awaited presentation took place, and the Greek invited the three newcomers to sit down.
They met on a night train in Europe.
They have now been married for almost 30 years.
From Mykonos to Hydra
Barbara and Anthony got to know each other better while exploring the Greek islands of Mykonos and Hydra.
Credit: Anthony and Barbara Sall
As the ferry sailed across the turquoise Aegean Sea to Mykonos, the travelers got to know one another, enjoying dinner and chatting for hours afterward.
When the ship docked, Anthony asked if Barbara would be interested in having dinner later, just the two of them.
"I told him, 'The island is very small and we'll see each other for sure,'" Barbara recalls.
Barbara realized that Anthony was interested in her and did not want to encourage his affection.
"I wasn't interested in starting a relationship at the time," Barbara says today.
Shortly before the trip to Greece, she had broken up with a man living in the Netherlands, and she was still coming to terms with that breakup when she met Anthony.
"That's why I was a bit distant, because I didn't want to get involved," he says today.
"But little by little, I was changing."
Over the next few days, Barbara, Anthony, Barbara's friend Evelyn, and the other travelers they had met on the ferry spent time together on Mykonos.
It turned out that the Greek had a house in a beautiful place on the beach.
The group would gather on the sand in front of his house, chatting until long after sunset, sharing travel stories.
"As we started spending more time together, I found Tony very interesting and I enjoyed his company and his stories," says Barbara.
"He has a great gift of people."
"Her friend liked me as a person, and that was definitely a positive for me in fighting for her interest and ultimately her limited affection," Anthony quips.
The week came to an end and the group dispersed.
"We never had contact with any of the people on the ferry," Barbara says.
Evelyn, Barbara's friend, had to go back to work, the Greek was staying in Mykonos, and Lili and Alan were coming home to America.
But Barbara still had a few days to go before her next shift.
"So Tony and I decided to go to Hydra together," he recalls.
Things changed even more when Tony and Barbara were left alone.
As they strolled the island's cobbled streets, chatting, they opened up to each other in a way they hadn't before.
"We got to know each other very well, without hiding anything from our past, and found that not only did we have a lot in common, but she was starting to care about me as I had cared about her from the first moment I saw her," he says. Anthony.
"We started to really connect."
Barbara remembers that they both spent days on the beach and long evenings in restaurants chatting and "enjoying each other."
They began, Anthony says, "to believe that this was something very different, and that it was beginning to become something lasting."
On their third day on Hydra, Anthony told Barbara that he thought they would get married one day.
"I laughed thinking the Americans were completely crazy," Barbara says, laughing again at the memory.
But looking back, he says he was falling in love, even though he didn't know it yet.
"We both began to realize that we couldn't just say 'goodbye' at the end of the Greek experience, and we had to start thinking about continuing a long-term commitment," says Anthony.
A weekend in Vienna
During his five years of traveling the world, Anthony had not returned to the United States once.
In part, for financial reasons: he financed his adventure with a half-job and all he earned went to the next stage of the trip.
Anthony was also convinced that his father would try to convince him to stay in the United States if he returned, so he put off returning to "real" life as long as possible.
The fact is that the week after his departure from Hydra, the expected reunion with his parents took place.
Anthony's parents were visiting Vienna, Austria for work, and Anthony planned to meet them while in town.
Anthony invited Barbara and she accepted.
The two said goodbye in Greece and met up in Austria a week later.
For Barbara, arriving in Vienna was a bit of a surprise, as she suddenly realized that Anthony came from a wealthy family.
"All the time we were together in Greece we shared everything, he had a limited budget," she recalls.
"I arrived in Vienna, he picked me up in a chauffeured limousine and we stopped in front of the Imperial Hotel. His parents were staying in the Grand Suite, and I had no idea at the time."
Anthony did not tell his parents that he was going with Barbara.
On the one hand, that would have involved a long-distance phone call from Europe to the US, no mean feat in 1969. But on the other hand, while Anthony was sure his parents would adore Barbara when they met her, he didn't know how they would react. when they found out she was German.
Anthony's parents were Jewish, and since World War II, they had avoided German products and had not done business in Germany.
Anthony's father was the first to meet Barbara;
her mother was still in the suite, getting ready for dinner.
His father immediately returned upstairs to inform his wife.
"This woman, I'm crazy about her," he said.
When Anthony's mother met Barbara, she had a similar reaction.
The two women became fast friends.
"We were very close," says Barbara.
"We hit it off right away and I felt very comfortable."
"I adored Barbara," says Anthony.
"They were inseparable."
Anthony, Barbara, and Anthony's parents spent a wonderful weekend in Vienna, and from there, Anthony and Barbara's relationship "started to move really fast," as Anthony puts it.
He continued to travel over the next few months, traversing Eastern Europe to cross more countries off his list.
Meanwhile, Barbara returned to her Air France base in Frankfurt.
The two saw each other whenever they could.
"Whenever I had a few days off, he would come to Frankfurt and spend them with me," says Barbara.
On one of those trips, Barbara introduced Anthony to her parents, who lived in the mountainous Black Forest region of Germany.
Anthony loved it and enjoyed showing him the beautiful landscapes of the area.
A new life in America
Here are Anthony and Barbara on their wedding day in 1970. Credit: Anthony and Barbara Sall
In November 1969, Anthony's five-year affair came to an end and he returned to the United States.
Barbara flew to Philadelphia for a visit that Thanksgiving and was warmly received by Anthony's extended family.
And then we decided, "Now what?" Barbara recalls.
"We can't meet on the other side of the Atlantic, because then it wasn't so easy. You couldn't call on the phone like you do now. So we thought: 'Well, either we get married, or we have to break up.'"
The couple decided to take a chance.
"So I flew back to Germany, sold my car, got rid of my apartment, quit my job, came back on December 31, 1969," Barbara says.
"And two weeks later we got married."
Barbara converted to Judaism before the wedding, which took place in a Philadelphia synagogue.
"I had never had a religion. I was never baptized; in East Germany, nobody had a religion," he says.
It was a small but festive wedding, and afterward Barbara and Anthony settled in Philadelphia.
This is how two strangers fell in love in the elevator of a hotel in Greece
For Barbara, who adopted the surname of Anthony after the wedding, moving to the United States was yet another international adventure.
"I was away from home since I was 12 years old. And after boarding school, as I said, I went to France and England. So I had already been away from my family for many, many years. They were used to me being very independent. So I didn't they were surprised when I told them, 'I'm going to the United States,'" Barbara says.
Anthony's parents also facilitated his settlement in the United States.
"I was very lucky to have them in my life, they were always there for us, supporting us and loving us in everything imaginable," says Barbara.
A year later, in 1971, Anthony and Barbara boarded the newly launched Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) ocean liner for their honeymoon.
Tony went to work for the Revlon cosmetics company, which relocated him to Chicago, where the couple welcomed their first child.
Anthony and Barbara had three more children.
In the late 1970s, a summer vacation in France inspired Barbara to reapply for the flight attendant position.
She went to work for National Airlines and rediscovered her passion for flying.
When National Airlines was purchased by Pan American World Airways in 1980, Barbara traded in her wings for the gold and blue Pan Am insignia.
Later, when Pan Am went bankrupt in the 1990s, Barbara was hired by Delta.
Today she continues to fly internationally with Delta, and she says that her passion for the job has not diminished at 76 years of age.
"Every trip is like a mini vacation," says Barbara.
Barbara and Anthony have four children and have instilled in them a love of travel.
Credit: Anthony and Barbara Sall
Anthony, now 81 and retired, says he still gets emotional every time Barbara returns from a work trip.
"My God, anyone would say I just met her. Here we are, 54 years together, 53 married. And I can't wait for the day she comes home from her trip after only three measly days."
When Anthony and Barbara's children were teenagers, they followed in their parents' footsteps and embarked on solo tours of Europe.
"They weren't even out of high school and people were like, 'Aren't you nervous that they're all alone in Europe?'" Barbara recalls.
Barbara always explained that no, she wasn't nervous.
She wanted her children to see the world, to have independent adventures, to be open to new experiences.
"To this day, they still travel a lot," says Barbara.
"Now they try to teach their children what is in the world."
more than 50 years later
Anthony and Barbara have been together for over 50 years and now live in California.
Credit: Anthony and Barbara Sall
Today, Anthony and Barbara live in California, close to their children.
They are very involved in the lives of their grandchildren, whose ages range from 6 to 32 years.
Anthony says that he has become more of a homebody in recent years and these days he lets Barbara travel the world.
But the couple, who just celebrated 53 years of marriage, still have a lot in common and love spending time together.
"Every Saturday we go out, have dinner together or with other couples," says Barbara.
"We love to socialize," says Anthony.
"Having friends, close relatives."
They also enjoy reminiscing about their adventures, especially how they met while traveling in Greece in 1969.
"When people ask us, 'How did you meet?' and we tell our story, people always say, 'My God, you should write a book,'" Barbara says.
"Everyone!" shares Anthony.
"I always thought, 'Oh my gosh, this story is amazing.' But I thought, well, I lived it, so of course it's amazing to me, and of course it's amazing to Barbara."
They met one Christmas morning on a train... They've now been together for 10 years
Although the couple did not keep in touch with the friends they made in Greece in 1969, Anthony recently tracked down Lili and Alan, the American couple who encouraged him to talk to Barbara on the ferry.
Anthony and Alan had a long phone conversation, and the two couples hope to meet in the near future.
"The truth is that when we split up after Mykonos, both he and Lili were betting that we would end up together somehow," says Anthony.
"We plan to meet up to catch up on our lives, and we imagine we'll pick up the story where we left off 54 years ago."
Anthony and Barbara's five decades of marriage have included some more difficult chapters.
For Anthony and Barbara, getting through these difficult times is what it means to love for the long haul.
"If you really love that person, they're worth fighting for," Barbara says.
"Being with someone who means everything to you is the luckiest thing that can happen to a human being. I truly believe that," Anthony says.
"Stories like this are rarely lived and told, but ours is one we both cherish with all our hearts, for how many people can meet in such a short period of time, from opposite ends of the Atlantic Ocean, and manage to put together a lasting story like this, which is still valid today?", he says.
"What a life".
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