Can you recover old iphone messages if setting to keep messages was set at 1 year

Hi,

My wife's iphone Messages setting was set to keep messages for 1 year. I am writing to see if there is any way to recover messages older than 1 year (looking for a message that is 4 years old) or have the old messages been completely deleted with no hope of recovery. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks.

Christophe