Greatest Love Story Was Fake

Next time someone tells you that something is "too good to be true," maybe you should listen.

In the words of Oprah Winfrey, the story of Herman Rosenblat and his wife, Roma Radzicki Rosenblat, is "the single greatest love story" she had ever heard. The problem is that it is all fiction.

Rosenblat told a compelling story on how he met his wife during the Holocaust. He had declared that his future wife would throw apples over the fence of his concentration camp to feed him. Twelve years later, they met again on a blind date in Coney Island and married.

According to the New York Times, after being hosted on Winfrey's show in 1996, the Rosenblats and their story became widely popular to the point where versions of the tale appeared on magazines and led Rosenblat to write a memoir titled Angel at the Fence.

It was during the making of the book that one of Rosenblat's agents confessed that the story was invented. The memoir, which was going to be released in February, was cancelled by Berkley Books and Rosenblat was ordered to return his advance.

"I wanted to bring happiness to people," said Rosenblat in a statement. "My motivation was to make good in this world."