SHE was born in the USA, but now Ramona Mulligan is in Bolton — and it is all thanks to her love of Bruce Springsteen.

For Mrs Mulligan, a recruitment consultant, swapped her home in beautiful southern California for the less-than-sunny North West of England after meeting the love of her life on Bruce Springsteen’s website.

Now she is happily married to forklift driver Kirk Mulligan and working at Adecco in Churchgate, Bolton.

Mrs Mulligan, aged 42, said she discovered her love for Springsteen, nicknamed The Boss, after reading an article about him in Time magazine in 2003.

She went to one of his concerts, and loved it so much that she was soon logging on to his official website to post a review.

It was there she came into contact with another Springsteen fan, 51-year-old Mr Mulligan, from Clayton-le-Woods, near Chorley.

She said: “Before we knew it we just fell in love. We fell in love before we even spoke on the phone.

“We're still in awe of the fact that we had this chance. We cherish it every day.”

It was not long before she flew to England to meet Mr Mulligan, and by chance she arrived on the weekend closest to Bonfire Night.

She said: “I'd never even heard of Bonfire Night before, and when he drove me back from the airport, there were all these fireworks going off everywhere. He said, ‘I arranged all this for you’.

“I felt like I was in the middle of some romance movie. It was just this amazing thing.” When they were married in 2004, four of Springsteen’s songs were played at their ceremony. The couple still go to gigs together, and have travelled all over Europe and the world to watch him in concert.

Mrs Mulligan said: “I think that his music has been able to reach a lot of people, the average working person, the average human being out there.

“It’s at a level where they could be at their lowest point and it empowers them — and it's a hell of a gig too.”