Those who see 'The Vow' could be forgiven for thinking the film was some unbelievable tale dreamed up in a Hollywood studio somewhere.

In the movie, Rachel McAdams plays Paige, a woman who wakes up after a terrible car accident with no recollection of ever marrying her devoted husband, Leo, played by Channing Tatum. Leo then spends the rest of the film getting his wife to fall back in love with him again.

Sounds too fantastical to be real, right?

Yet 'The Vow' is based on the true story of American couple, Kim and Krickitt Carpenter. With the popular film set for release on DVD and Blu-ray this month, the Carpenters are again preparing to share their incredible love story with the world.

The couple met in the early '90s, while Kim was working as a baseball coach at a university.

"I called to order a sports sample from a company in California and, lo and behold, the person who answered the phone I married a year later," he told Yahoo! New Zealand.

"[Krickitt and I] established a relationship via the telephone line and letters and such, and then we had a first visit ... and the rest of it is history. We got married a year after we first spoke."

But the Carpenters had little time to enjoy being newlyweds. While driving to visit family for their first Thanksgiving together, they were involved in a serious car accident. When Krickitt finally regained consciousness, she couldn't remember the previous 18 months of her life - including her marriage to Kim.

Kim says it was a "very trying time".

"One of the biggest things that added to the uncertainty of what was happening during that time was the fact that when you don’t understand head injuries and you’re looking at somebody who is able to talk and things like that and you just can't gravitate toward understanding or comprehending what is wrong," Kim says.

But eventually he convinced Krickitt to give life married to a virtual stranger a shot. What gave her the confidence to do so?

"I had wedding rings, I had a wedding video and the girl looked exactly like me. I had wedding photos and the girl looked totally like me," Krickitt explains.

"My parents told me I was married to [Kim]. Because my brain couldn't really connect things together, I just had child-like faith and I kind of went along with it early on.

"It was very confusing and difficult, but [the marriage] was the truth and I knew it was the truth and so I kind of just went with it."

Nearly 20 years later, the Carpenters are still happily married and have two children together. Krickitt never did regain her lost memory.

She says the family was excited about their story being made into a major Hollywood movie and have a lot of admiration for Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams for bringing their characters to life on the big screen.

"[Channing and Rachel] are fabulous individuals, they're fabulous actors," Krickitt says.

"They were awesome together and we really are pleased with how they did with the movie. We think they did a fantastic job as far as representing us, our personalities and what we were struggling with."

Kim agrees the actors did a great job.

"They actually studied us, they watched us on film, on videos, our interviews, they read magazine articles and papers," he says.

While the makers of the film did take some artistic licence with the Carpenters' tale, with "a lot of differences" as to what really took place, Krickitt says the spirit of their story is still there.

"The idea of what we went through - meeting and marrying and having a crash and losing memory - that idea is the same."

And, of course, it was always going to be difficult to tell a 19-year-long love story in 104 minutes - which is why Kim is working on plans for a sequel to 'The Vow'.

"There's a lot of story left to be told," he says.

'The Vow' is out on DVD and Blu-ray from June 13.

Click here to read Rachel McAdams' thoughts on bringing 'The Vow' to the big screen