Bethel, New York (United States) (AFP)

Nick and Bobbi Ercoline had only been dating for three months in 1969 when they joined hundreds of thousands of other young people in the wind at the Woodstock Festival. The lovers were far from suspecting that they were going to make history.

It was a few months later, when they were still spinning the perfect love, that they realized that one of their tender embraces, standing, a blanket wrapped around them, had been immortalized and used for the cover triple live album compiling the best moments of the festival.

This brief moment of intimacy had become one of the symbols of the "peace and love" generation.

"We said to each other + You're kidding? + It was a total shock," recalls Nick Ercoline.

Fifty years later, the couple is still united. The two hippies married in 1971 and are now treated like real rock stars when they stroll lovingly in the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, which runs the site where Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, in particular, played in a torrential rain.

Lovers still live near the rural town of Bethel, northwestern New York. They do not remember exactly when photographer Burk Uzzle pressed the shutter button.

"But it's a pose you can see in our house every morning," smiled Nick, even though he lost his curls and his wife Bobbi is no longer wearing his huge sunglasses.

"Whether in the bedroom or the kitchen, when waking up or before going to bed".

"What you do not see is that when he talks too much I pinch his hand behind his back," Bobbi mischievously intervenes.

- Cannabis and vomit -

"We were not aware of what we had witnessed," she told AFP on the occasion of the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the legendary festival. "Every year that passes, we think back and we realize that it was something really phenomenal".

Around them, many nostalgic onlookers of the hippie years brought their copies of the album and ask for autographs and selfies.

This place taken despite them in the pop culture "did not change our lives, but it improved them", considers Bobbi.

"I'm very grateful to have been part of this Woodstock experience," she says, before casting a glare at Nick and adding, "And that I can share that with the man I know for 50 years ".

His memories of Woodstock? "The smells ... The heat, the humidity, it smelled like campfires, food, patchouli oil, grass, body odor and vomit, your senses were bombarded.

The Epinal imagery of the festival has not lost its charm, she sighs, remembering "songs, dance, laughter, musical instruments, crying babies".

Even in a politically and socially complicated period like the late 1960s, Woodstock recalled "there is always hope, as long as we are kind and peaceful and we love each other" .

The two lovebirds are treated like VIPs this weekend in Bethel, where, comfortably seated in lounge chairs, they held hands listening to the performance of folk artist Arlo Guthrie, who had already performed there half a century ago.

"It's them!", Whisper amazed fans as they walk past them.

Patrick Depauw, who came from Belgium especially for the occasion, is one of their admirers.

"I bought the triple album, I spent hundreds of times watching this couple and imagining what they could live," he told AFP.

"The perfect union, a love that never ends," he enthuses, showing his disc signed by the lovebirds and embellished with the message "peace and love". "Look, they are still together 50 years later, they are next to each other, they are generous, they love each other and they pass it on".

© 2019 AFP