From Penpals to Facebook

From the Las Vegas Review Journal:

Longtime pen pals Tracey Sharpe and JoAnne Snyder, who began communicating through old-fashioned snail mail 29 years ago, met for the first time on the Strip last weekend.

Sharpe, then 16 and growing up in New Zealand, and Snyder, 14, a California girl, began their correspondence after finding a pen-pal service in the back of magazines.

Paired by chance, they quickly became the best of friends, each willing to expose secrets to the other they wouldn't tell their friends back home.

After nearly 20 years of steady letter-writing and rare international phone calls, they fell out of touch for 10 years after Snyder moved to Chandler, Ariz., in 1999.

After learning that another friend had just reunited with a pen pal through Facebook, Sharpe, now 45, signed up -- and there was Snyder, now age 43!