Nick and Bobbi Ercoline were immortalized on the cover of the original ‘Woodstock’ album in 1970, as well as on the movie poster.

Of all the images snapped during the Woodstock weekend, one stands out above all: a young couple huddled together in a blanket, standing alone in a sea of people lying on wet ground. The photo earned iconic status through its placement on the cover of the original “Woodstock” album in 1970, as well as on the movie poster.

Forty years later, the couple in the photo – Nick and Bobbi Ercoline, both 60 – are still together. The couple married two summers after that famous weekend and they still live less than an hour’s drive from the original concert site of Bethel, N.Y. The 40th anniversary of the ultimate hippie concert August 15-17 has blast the Ercoline’s back into the spotlight. The couple doesn’t remember being photographed by Burk Uzzle: “We weren’t striking a pose. We were as surprised as everybody to see that photo on the album cover.”

They discovered their photo on the cover of the album while at a friend’s house listening to it and passing around the album cover. First, Nick recognized the famous yellow butterfly staff in the left corner. “It belonged to this guy Herbie,” Nick says. “We latched on to him that day because he was having a very bad experience. He was tripping pretty heavily and he had lost his friends. After I saw that staff I said, ‘Hey that’s our blanket.’ Then I said, ‘Hey, that’s us.’” Bobbi, then 20, wasn’t overly impressed with her new found popularity. “Woodstock was over and done with at that time,” she says. “The only thing was that then I had to tell my mother I had gone. She didn’t know. But by then, she didn’t mind.”

The pair had met only three months earlier, over Memorial Day weekend, at the bar where Nick worked. “This waiter brought this beautiful blond in one day and said, ‘This is my girlfriend; keep an eye on her,’” Nick explains. “Every night she stood in front of me and we got friendlier and friendlier. Then one weekend he made the mistake of leaving her home while he went to the shore with the guys and he never told her. That was the end of that. And the beginning of this.”

As to why their photo was chosen, Nick has a theory. “It’s peaceful, which is what the event was about,” he says. “And it’s an honest representation of a generation. When we look at that photo I don’t see Bobbi and me. I see our generation.” In fact, their memories of the original event have more to do with the scene than the music, because they were too far away to hear or see much. “I remember the rain, the lack of toilets and the body odor,” Bobbi says. “I also remember an orange haze from the glowing lights of the stage. It was everywhere, lighting up the sky.”