In 1998, Elysia Simons was nine years old, and on the set of the now-iconic “I Still Call Australia Home” Qantas commercial with 100 other choristers.
It’s the ad that launched a thousand tears (to be honest, we still cry watching it) and flight bookings, but for Ell it also introduced her to the “shy, smiley” boy who’d one day be her husband.
His name was Paul Van Der Toorren, and he stood to her right while they filmed at Uluru.
“In between takes we would chat and joke around... [he] looked away as he giggled at my (probably not funny) jokes," Ell, now a wedding and family photographer, wrote on Instagram last year.
"I pretended to take a photo of one of my friends and I took a photo of Ellie. To this day I still have that photo," Paul admitted on the TODAY show on Sunday.
They didn't keep in contact after filming wrapped — remember, these were the pre-Instagram and Facebook days — but were reunited years later through a combination of mutual friends social media.
Adding to the "fateful" side of things, they'd been living close by but hadn't realised it at the time.
