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Just before Christmas, a hidden betrayal caught up with a married couple who first met in southern Italy in the 1930s.

In the game of love, everyone has a history. But it usually doesn’t come back to haunt you 60 years later. An Italian couple, married for 77 years, are splitting up over a series of love letters the husband found from an affair his wife had in the 1940s, The Telegraph reports. Court papers released in Rome this week describe the divorce of the 99-year-old Sardinian, Antonio C, and his soon-to-be ex-wife, Rosa C, a 96-year-old from Naples.

The couple has five children, a dozen grandchildren and one great-grand child together, but the relationship is reported to have been rocky for some time. Ten years ago, Antonio lived with one of his sons for a few weeks, before returning to Rosa in Rome. But a few days before Christmas this year, he was rummaging through an old chest of drawers when he came across the hidden love letters. He was so distraught that he immediately went to his wife and demanded a divorce. Rosa came clean and pleaded with him to stay, but Antonio appears to have had enough.

The Italian media blames the explosive split on the couple’s southern heritage, known in Italy for having a fiery, Mediterranean temperament. If the couple can’t resolve their differences, they are likely to become the oldest couple to divorce, overtaking a British pair of 98-year-olds who called it quits in 2009. But after almost eight decades together, Antonio and Rosa probably won’t find much consolation in the new record.