Subway Couple Breaks Up Despite Fairytale Beginning

This is a cautionary tale that proves not all fairytales have a fairytale ending.

Last November, we brought you the inspiring story of love struck Patrick Moberg, a then 21-year-old man who spotted a girl on a New York City subway train and immediately became smitten with the stranger. But when he lost her in the crowd, it appeared his chance to find out who she was disappeared with the overloaded transit car.

So Moberg created a website call ” New York Girl of My Dreams.com” designed to find her. And like most things on the Internet, it took about 10 seconds for word of his quest to spread. Within 48 hours, someone accessed the page, recognized the “girl” and let Moberg know who and where she was.

Camile Hayton was an Australian woman from Melbourne working as an intern at a magazine. Their eventual meeting and dating became a brief cause célèbre around the world.

But the attention soon faded and now, alas, so has their apparent ardour. After seeing each other out of the spotlight for several months, Hayton and Moberg are now once again de facto strangers on a train.

In an email to an Australian newspaper, the leading lady in this Hollywood-like movie plot confirms they just didn’t hit it off – and she’s single and searching again.

“I say we dated for a while but now we’re just friends,” the 23-year-old writes the Sunday Telegraph. “It’s really nice that people embraced the story. It is part of my life now.”

The former mystery woman admits she still gets recognized on the streets of Manhattan by well wishers who always ask the same question: “So what happened?” The answer isn’t what most are hoping to hear.

“I think the situation was so intense that it bonded us,” she reveals, “bonded us in a way that you could mistake, I guess, for being more romantic than it was. I don’t know. But I wanted to give it a go so I didn’t wonder what if, what if?”

The once publicity hungry Moberg, now 22, isn’t commenting on the end of his dream, saying only “we decided not to do any more press.”  

As for Hayton, she’s clearly moved on. Now off the magazine’s staff, she’s working in two vintage clothing stores, waitressing and thanks to the publicity boost – you guessed it – trying to make it as an actress.

She actually got a role in the “Sex and the City” movie, but it was such a quick cameo, even she almost missed her appearance on the screen.

And she’s also appeared in a tiny part in “As The World Turns,” which seems only fitting. After all, for the past year, her entire life has felt a lot like a soap opera.

And like those shows, this one’s real life storyline didn’t have a completely happy ending.