They took the back roads in a Chevy Impala, arriving mid-weekend for what would turnout to be one of the most memorable music festivals in history.

Little did they know they too would become a part of that history, lovers huddled standing under a blanket in a sea of mud, sleeping bodies at their feet and beyond.

Almost 40 years later, those same two lovers – Nick and Bobbi Ercoline – are still together, their famous picture just a snapshot of the many hugs to follow.

That picture became Woodstock’s movie poster, was the original album cover, and on the cover of Life magazine. Soon everyone wanted to know: who are those two embraced in such a way the love jumps off the page?

The love story of Nick and Bobbi became one of the most sought after stories ever. That it worked out, that it was local, homespun and remained so, just makes it a tale worth telling over and over.

Who doesn’t love a good love story? A happy ending? Hell, every song on the radio is about them.

They’re 60 now, and met just three months before the famous concert, the one they got into only because they were neighborhood kids who knew the back roads. They were so far from the stage they couldn’t even see it, but they could at least say they were they there.

But they never had to say, as they became Woodstock’s poster children and love story amid after-tales of massive drug use and horrendous hygiene, angry neighbors and angrier cops. There was no violence at Woodstock. None. But no tidiness either.

Peace, love and music, that’s what Nick and Bobbi’s picture says and that was the essence of Woodstock and the 60s perhaps. And that’s what Nick and Bobbi are about. I feel like I know them, their story’s been told so many times, their picture everywhere, even now as the 40th anniversary of Woodstock comes up in August.

He’s a housing inspector, she’s a school nurse. They still live in the same area they grew up in, the area where they ditched the Impala on a back road to walk the rest of the way to Woodstock. The area where they recalled that Woodstock was an experience that was about the fields, not the stages. It was in the smells – both good and bad -- and the people singing and dancing in the rain and mud, in love with life and each other.

Bobbi and Nick have two grown sons and a 10-room house with a Virgin Mary on the lawn. An American flag greets visitors, as does a plaque that says something along the lines of “hippies use back door.”

An American love story, a happy ending, peace and music. Who doesn’t want that?