Every highlight of Ruby Menke's life has been scribbled down along the way.

So have the quotidian, the disappointing. And the benchmarks, too, like marriage, two children, becoming an RN after middle age.

But while some introverts' stories are only contained in a diary, all of Ruby's revelations were shared. Every update she penned was sealed in an envelope and whisked overseas to England - Chelmsford, England, specifically, and to Ann Farthing.

Her pen pal.

Her pen pal, it's worth noting, for more than half a century.

"We just enjoyed each other's correspondence," said Ruby, 70, sitting in her tidy Dalton Gardens home. "Even when we sometimes only wrote once a year, a card at Christmas, we always kept in contact."

Throughout the decades of correspondence, they had never seen the other face to face, never heard the other's voice.

There was always an itch to breach the gap, extinguish the bit of mystery behind the anonymity of hand writing.

Until last month, when Ruby finally made the 4,600-mile jaunt in her first and likely last overseas trip to England.

After their meeting, Ruby can say she and Ann are simply pen pals no longer.

They're friends.

"It was a once in a lifetime thing," she said. "It's so unbelievable it could really happen."

Part of the family

It all started in the mid 1950s. A paper listed with names and descriptions of teens overseas was passed around Ruby's eighth grade classroom in Dalkena, Wash., and the 14-year-old picked out a girl similar to herself.

She and Ann shared commonalities. Both had both lost their mothers at a young age, and were raised by their grandparents.

"It was just interesting, someone in a different culture, a different country, that we had so much in common," Ruby said.

They started writing. And they didn't stop.

Ann, writing in an email this week, remembered they initially swapped tidbits about "the usual teenage things," like boys, clothes, pop music. Ann wrote about seeing the Beatles, Ruby about dress making.

"I remember a photo of Ruby in a beautiful prom dress," Ann recalled. "We didn't have school proms over here at that time, and I remember how grand it all sounded."

As their lives unfolded, they shared the developments, big and small. Boyfriends, marriage, children, grandchildren.

Ruby wrote about her kids' 4-H events. She mailed a pair of hot pants she made to Ann's daughter.

"She was so very proud wearing them," Ann wrote.

They also touched on all that happened to their countries in between; Ruby sent Ann a newspaper clipping of the Mt. St. Helens eruption, and Ann wrote about watching Princess Diana getting married on TV. They wrote at length about their reactions to 9/11.

As society around them turned to communicating through screens, Facebook, Twitter, email, they held true to pen and paper.

"I guess it's because I've never done the others," said Ruby, who doesn't own a computer.

But the flow of communication never ceased, said Ruby's daughter Cindy, 48, who heard about the letter contents throughout her childhood.

"I always remember hearing about 'the pen pal,'" Cindy said. "We just felt like we knew her."

Ruby agreed.

"It seemed like she was family," she said.

Face to face

Ruby always longed to travel, her daughter observed. Her mother collected stamps from all over the world.

"That's how she traveled, through stamps," Cindy said.

After Ruby wed her husband, Gary, it seemed that was the only traveling there would be.

"Dad was never interested," Cindy said of leaving North Idaho, where the Menkes have lived since 1960. "If we could drive to a car show, he'd go."

Then a year ago Ruby was diagnosed with Parkinson's. Suddenly there was a timeline for her physical fortitude, for the possibility of adventure.

And for meeting Ann.

"We decided, if we were going to do it, now was when to do it," Ruby said.

She bought her first passport. She and Cindy scheduled a trip from March 20 to 28, in time to meet with Cindy's daughter Erin, 21, who had been attending school in Germany.

With a gift of North Idaho huckleberry products in hand, they took a train to Chelmsford, where Ann's husband Ron met them and delivered them home.

Cindy said her mother had been aflutter, worried the meeting might be awkward, that after so much revealed in their letters, they would have nothing to share face to face.

"What should I wear? Do I look OK?" she remembered her mother saying.

But Ann rolled out an impressive welcome.

She prepared tea and sandwiches, served on her grandmother's china.

After taking each other in, the women could fully appreciate everything they had in common. Both were 70, married with two children. Both enjoy gardening and camping.

"It was unusual when we met with her, the paralleling of their lives," Cindy said..

The meeting was warm and easy as they caught up on the latest news.

Ann revealed that she had saved all of Ruby's letters, Cindy said.

"She would sit with her eyes twinkling, 'I remember your mom's first boyfriend, his name was Robert,'" Cindy said with a laugh. "She knew about the whole family history."

Ann confessed in her email that it was "a dream come true" to meet Ruby and her family.

"Ruby was as warm and friendly as in her letters, and the time we spent together went all too fast," Ann wrote. "We both can't think how quick the years have passed."

To be continued

Ruby said she is grateful for hours spent at Ann's abode, which has attached something tangible to the words Ruby has read.

She knows how cozy Ann's home is, she remarked. What her camping trailer looks like.

"It personalizes everything more," she said.

They want to maintain the closeness. The women have agreed to try Skyping, a free download application to conduct video calls on the computer.

Ruby will try to use her daughter's computer.

Ann said she still intends to write.

"I know we will keep writing as long as we both can," she said.

The fact that they've made it this far is incredible, Ruby admitted.

And she looks forward to the next read.

"This is how you build any relationship, by connecting and sharing ideas and things," she said. "To do it with someone you don't even know is quite amazing."