Imagine that 38 years of marriage, three children, several grandchildren and one broken toilet later, you get it back.
Sounds a little unbelievable, but that’s exactly what happened to Montana couple Terry and Donna Claver over Thanksgiving, when Terry found the sapphire engagement ring that Donna had lost 36 years prior.
According to the Billings Gazette, Terry and Donna decided to get married after just three dates back in 1973. Short on cash, the 19-year-old sweethearts picked out an inexpensive sapphire engagement ring, which Donna lost in the toilet in their first home two years later while pregnant with the couple’s first child.
Unable to recover the ring, the couple continued on with their lives, moved out of their first home and continued to raise their family. They are now co-pastors of a Montana church. But Terry always wanted to get that missing ring back.
Over Thanksgiving, Terry and his son were working on a home across the street from the house when he saw the current owners throwing the now broken toilet away. On the off chance that the ring had survived 36 years inside the potty, Terry broke the toilet with a sledgehammer, only to find the ring that had been lost all of those years ago.
Terry returned the ring to his ecstatic wife. He told the Billings Gazette: “If we would have got the ring back six weeks after we lost it, we probably wouldn’t have remembered it,” Terry said. “Every marriage goes through its seasons. Sometimes you think everything the other person does is cute, and other times you can’t stand to be around them. Finding the ring brought back the same original feelings we had when we were kids. It was a gift from God that made those feelings strong again.”