Tweet On Austin 'i love you so much' Mural Backstory Goes Viral

AUSTIN, TX — India may have the Taj Mahal as a romantic grand gesture, but Austin has its "i love you so much" mural as an albeit smaller, but no less significant, manifestation of the tactics of love.

A recent tweet sharing the story behind the iconic mural on the exterior wall of Jo's coffee shop at 1300 S. Congress Ave. — where natives and visitors alike stop to snap photos every day — has gone viral since its Sunday posting. Twitter user @jumexdedurazno confirmed the sign was born after a love spat between the couple who own the popular coffee shop, prompting its creation as a peace offering.

The Twitter user wrote in stream-of-conscious manner: "Today at work, I learned that the owners of Jo's are lesbians, and they were drunk and got in a fight and broke up and one of them wrote on the wall so the other could see it when she opened he next day and they've been together ever since and they re-write it whenever they repaint the wall."

As gestures go, that kind of puts the whole flowers-and-chocolate thing to shame, like, big time.

It's a true story, Jo's Coffee officials said in reportedly confirming the story behind what is arguably the city's most iconic bit of graffiti. The couple has stayed together, as has the now-popular mural. Not that it was needed (given its popularity as a de rigueur stop) but the tweet has led to even more queues for picture-taking at the spot — primarily by couples re-affirming their own love and devotion for each other.

Yet it's not the first time the story's been told, and the context is well-known to natives. As the Austinnot website previously reported in an overview of Austin's best-known graffiti art, local musician Amy Cook took a can of spray paint to write what's essentially a five-word love letter to partner Liz Lambert. While meant as a communique between two, the sign was an instant hit with coffee shop visitors, and has since become a landmark for the love-struck.

The sign's sentiment has been widely duplicated on a variety of merchandise ranging from cutting boards to hats to shirts, expanding its message of love globally as people send the items to as gifts to friends and family. Still, haters gonna hate as the wall has defaced over the years. But the wall is always fixed after each defacing, emerging each time stronger than ever both in the literal sense and figuratively in terms of the potency of its message.

All you need is love, people.

At last check, the recent tweet had been shared nearly 25,000 times and garnered 132,000 likes. As for us, this story has given us all the feels. Sigh....