Stan Beaton lost his wife twice: once, when she died in 2003 of stomach cancer, and again when a treasured recording of her voice was deleted by the phone company.

So when engineers were able to retrieve the message, he was overcome with emotion:

“It’s just a wonderful, wonderful sound that I thought was lost forever.”

Ruby Beaton had recorded the couple’s greeting on their phone’s voicemail, a sound so dear to Stan that he refused to change phone companies, just so he could have the message forever. But when the company upgraded services, the recording disappeared — shocking and devastating Beaton, who had been assured that the voicemail would not be lost.

He reached out to Virgin Media to see what they could do, and when the company heard his story, it put nearly a dozen engineers on the case. That team was not optimistic about their chances, but after three days of work, they were able to find and save Ruby’s original recording.

And the story doesn’t end there. To ensure that Stan has this keepsake forever, they are sending it to him on a CD, and also plan to make donations to charities of his choice, as an apology for the technical issue that caused the problem in the first place.

Stan and Ruby were married for 20 years, and after her death, Stan says he tried several times to back up the message on his own, but was not able to. He’s very thankful to the phone company for its work, and says he’s “staggered” by the response.