I’ll Never Stop Loving You

For Valentine’s Day, I decided to share a special story about a most special person in my life: my husband. We’ve been married for 34 years and have known each other almost 36 years. That’s more than half my life!

A Chance Meeting

We met at a bar called J.D.’s on the Green in Walla Walla, Washington. The band playing that night was called Trespasser. My husband-to-be was at J.D.’s that night, along with his best friend, to support the band because the drummer was his friend’s brother. Trespasser was a Tri-Cities band that played mostly cover tunes, but they had a small repertoire of original songs.

One of those songs, called “I’ll Never Stop Loving You,” became our song. We danced to it the night we met. It was the night my husband had prayed to meet a nice girl he could marry. The next day, he told his grandma he’d met the woman he was going to marry. And he was right.

A year and a half later, the keyboardist and lead singer of Trespasser played “I’ll Never Stop Loving You” at our wedding as the guests arrived and were seated.

Lost and Found Again

It’s been years, maybe decades, since I’d heard this song, though I never forgot it. I long ago gave up on the hope that there was a recording of it somewhere. I’d scoured the Internet more than once only to come up empty handed.

Then, about three weeks ago, my Sweetie was looking for something in our shed and came across a cassette tape that said “Trespasser” on the label. Of course, we no longer own a cassette player. I mean, seriously, who does?

Ever the determined one, my husband found a cassette player on Amazon that actually converts cassettes to MP3 files. As soon as it arrived via Amazon delivery, he listened to that entire cassette to find our song. Alas, it was not there. The tape turned out to be only snippets of the cover tunes the band regularly played. It must have been the tape they used to get gigs.

And yet, my husband was not detered. He felt sure we had that song on tape somewhere. So back to the shed he ventured. He searched and searched and finally found a cassette labeled “I’ll Never Stop Loving You.” It didn’t say Trespasser anywhere, but he knew what it had to be.

And that is how the song that was lost has now been found. You can listen to the MP3 below. It has a distinctly ’80s sound and makes me smile to know how true it is about my Sweet Valentine and me.