The world\u2019s oldest pen pals have both turned 100 years old, and are celebrating 80 years of letters sent across the pond.<\/p>\n
Geoff Banks from Devon, England, and American Celesta Byrne from New Jersey started writing to each other in 1938 when they were 16-years-old.<\/p>\n
They were paired by an educational project that sought to connect British and American students\u2014and 84 years later are still corresponding.<\/p>\n
Geoff even kept in touch during World War II, while serving as a mechanic on the British aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious in the Pacific.<\/p>\n
They began using email a while back, to give Geoff a break from putting pen to paper, which became difficult\u2014and recently they had their first Zoom call<\/p>\n
Despite having chatted for decades (6 years longer than the current Guinness World record pen-pal relationship of 78 years), the pair only met for the first time in 2002\u2014when Geoff visited New York City at 80 years old for Christmas.<\/p>\n
They also met for a second time two years later, when Celesta invited him to her New Jersey home for lunch.<\/p>\n
Despite having such a unique relationship, the pair never became romantic, even after Geoff\u2019s wife passed eleven years ago.<\/p>\n
Nowadays, Geoff relies on young people to assist him in setting up a chat with her, using \u201cthis new thing called Zoom\u201d.<\/p>\n
Celesta does the same from her new residence in Texas, where she moved to be close to family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The world\u2019s oldest pen pals have both turned 100 years old, and are celebrating 80 years of letters sent across the pond.","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":27489,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"featured_img_display":"Yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[3096],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-good-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-27 04:45:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"react_link":"https:\/\/country929.com\/blogs\/good-news\/2022\/12\/worlds-oldest-pen-pals-turn-100\/","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfcofm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfcofm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfcofm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfcofm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfcofm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32512"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfcofm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32514,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfcofm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32512\/revisions\/32514"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfcofm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfcofm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfcofm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfcofm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}