Renowned journalist Ann Curry reemerged this week to promote her six part PBS series “We’ll Meet Again” by opening up about the love story of her parents, which she said inspired her to become a journalist.

“I hold a special place in my heart for reunion stories, because I have a pretty amazing one of my own. My father, Bob Curry, and my mother, Hiroe Nagase, fell in love while he was a sailor stationed in Japan at the end of World War II,” Ann began. “My mother, a rice farmer’s daughter, was working as a streetcar conductor. One day my father noticed her, and he began taking that streetcar every day for weeks until he worked up the courage to introduce himself.”

She explained that American servicemen were discouraged from marrying Japanese women, so the Navy transferred him out of Japan. This left Hiroe heartbroken, as she feared Bob would never come back.

“It took Dad two years to convince the Navy to station him in Japan again,” Ann continued. “When he returned, he boarded a train in Tokyo and traveled to my mother’s rural farming village, in the far northern part of the country. When she saw him at the doorstep, she ran to him, and they fell into each other’s arms, weeping.”

“I think we all have stories like this in our families; I just happen to know mine,” Ann said. “But my father realized my mother was very, very thin. She told him she was dying, diagnosed with a terminal case of tuberculosis. My father married her even so. He insisted that she see an American doctor, who said her only chance of survival was an extremely risky surgery. My father and my mother had to say goodbye a second time, this time before she headed to the operating room.”

Doctors removed 90 percent of one of Hiroe’s lungs, and Bob nursed her back to health as she recovered.

“After six months, she rose from her bed, plump and healthy, and eventually they had five kids—of whom I am the eldest. They were together for more than 50 years, until my mother died in 2001,” Ann said.

Learning her own family’s story inspired Ann to enter journalism so that she could learn the stories of others.

“As a journalist, I have learned so many stories about our capacity for greatness,” Ann wrote. “Over and over again, even in the worst of times, I have discovered stories about humans who rise to help others, even at risk to themselves. These stories of courage, resilience, empathy, and kindness say something about how much we mean to one another. I have met people who are moved to reunite with people they barely even know.”

Find out more about Ann’s story in the video below, and SHARE this so your friends and family can see this as well!