After a chance meeting in Singapore, a young Seiichiro Isoda nursed a crush on a Singaporean girl that would last 40 years.

On Sunday, the Japanese businessman finally got to meet Ms Yvonne Chua, now 58, again.

When he was 15 years old, Mr Isoda, who now heads a multinational company, visited Singapore with his parents. The family stayed at the then Apollo Hotel, where Ms Chua worked as one of the service staff.

After graduating from university, he came back to Singapore to work for six years and tried to look for her. He had a photo with her, but did not know her name.

The girl stayed in his thoughts over the decades until, two weeks ago, he decided to approach Chinese evening daily Lianhe Wanbao and ask it to publish the photo.

Ms Chua - who is married with two daughters, a son and three grandchildren - was persuaded to meet Mr Isoda. Seven members of her family, including her husband, turned up, too.

Mr Isoda, now 55 and married, recognised Ms Chua immediately and they spent two hours talking about their lives.

"I was very surprised, I've changed so much, but he could tell it was me," Ms Chua, now the head of a logistics firm, told Wanbao.

She still remembers Mr Isoda, she said, as it was her first job and he was the only guest at the hotel to ask to take a photo with her.

Mr Isoda said his friends advised him to let their meeting remain a beautiful memory, but he could not let it go. "I have too much I wanted to know, and to tell her," he said.

Ms Chua's daughter, Wong Xin Pei, 25, told Wanbao that she knew her mother was beautiful when she was young, but never guessed that someone would hold a torch for her for 40 years.

She added: "Mum told us how she had many suitors in the past, but we thought they were just stories."