A U.K. man was overjoyed last Friday when a phone company recovered a lost voice recording of his late wife he kept for over a decade, BBC News reported.
Stan Beaton, 68, said he was devastated when the recording of his wife, Ruby, he kept on his voicemail since 2003 was deleted last December due to a cellphone switch with Virgin Media.
But after three days of trying and a little technical magic, Virgin engineers were able to recover the voicemail so Beaton could hear his beloved wife's voice again.
"It's just a wonderful, wonderful sound that I thought was lost forever," said Beaton, who broke down and wept upon hearing his wife's voice.
"I'm staggered at the lengths they have gone to."
Beaton, a retired forklift driver from Mirfield, told BBC Radio Leeds that after Ruby died of cancer, he would listen to her voicemail recording whenever he needed cheering up.
He stayed with the same phone company to make sure the message would never be lost.
"I've always resisted changing companies because whenever I mentioned that my wife's voice was our voicemail message and would it be retained and each company said no, so that's why I never changed," he told the BBC.
Virgin staff reportedly assured the widower the message would still be there. When the messaged vanished in December, Beaton was sad and furious.
But after Beaton contacted the company, a team of 11 experts managed to find the voicemail. Virgin Director of Engineering Rob Evans described it as "searching for a needle in a haystack," the BBC reported.
Ruby's voice is now permanently saved for their customer.
"They've made this old age pensioner extremely happy," Beaton said.