A heartbroken Texas couple who spent seven anguished years believing that their missing daughter had been murdered have discovered that she was living in Kentucky and had simply never bothered to contact them.

Brandi Stahr vanished in 1998 while studying at Texas A&M University in College Station, sparking a massive police investigation and years of agony for her parents.

They were told last week she had relocated to Florence, Ky., after an anonymous tipster called a missing-persons hot line.

“We are overwhelmed,” Stahr’s stepfather, Kenneth Dickenson, told The Post.

Stahr’s parents had been preparing to register their daughter legally dead and had chosen her tombstone.

It turned out that Stahr, now 27, had run away after an argument with her mother that was sparked by her parents’ refusal to pay her tuition after she began skipping classes.

“She was upset by it all and left. She said that every day that went by, it made it harder for her to pick up the phone and call us,” said Dickenson.