Text message RING

WHEN lonely Jennie Mcglashan had a moment of weakness and decided to text her ex, the result was totally unpredictable.

Because she got her old boyfriend’s number completely wrong... and ended up finding her Mr Right.

Jennie feared she might never be happy again after her relationship broke down in the same year that her father died from a brain tumour.

But the 21-year-old shop worker had used her mobile to accidentally contact a total stranger called Rob – and he turned out to be the man who could really ring her bell.

Once he had answered Jennie’s message, the couple got texting, then talking. They decided to meet, immediately fell in love and then got married.

Seventeen years later the couple – who now have daughters Grace, 11, and Sophia , seven – are still inseparable.

“Sometimes I forget how remarkable it is,” says Jennie.

“It must have been a one in a million chance, but we just clicked straight away. I knew it was something special really early on. I’m a big believer in fate.”

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The couple’s love story began on a cold November evening in 2001.

In a bid to move on from her ex, Jennie had deleted his number but then decided to get back in touch.

She said: “I’d had quite a bit to drink and was probably feeling sorry for myself, so I sent a text which simply said ‘Long time, no speak’.

“I didn’t get a response. I thought he knew who it was but didn’t want to reply. It was only in the morning that I saw I had a message saying, ‘I think you’ve got the wrong number.’

“I thought it was my ex pretending he didn’t know who it was. So I texted back saying, ‘Very funny, it’s Jennie.’

“My now-husband came back on saying, ‘No, my name’s Rob. You’ve got the wrong number. I live in Germany.’”

Engineer Rob, from Manchester, was 28 at the time and had two phones – an English one and a German one.

He said: “I swear the English one had been turned off, but when I woke that morning it was on and there was this message from a wrong number.

“I don’t think I can explain why we got speaking, but we both just wanted to keep talking.”

By the time the couple had established they were strangers, they were deep in text conversation.

And Jennie could not get her stranger out of her mind. She said: “I was an assistant manager in a clothes shop in Belfast and I remember I kept going back to check my phone because I wanted to hear from him. “It was very strange.” After a couple of weeks of texting, Jennie’s friends urged her to actually call her mystery man.

They were on a night out in Belfast while Rob was in an Irish bar in Germany, with his pals.

Jennie said: “My friends were saying, ‘Ring him, ring him, and see what he’s like.’ I called, but he didn’t answer and I thought he didn’t want to speak to me.

“What I didn’t know was he was holding his phone as it was ringing, but was too scared to answer.”

Rob’s friends persuaded him to get