Thanks to their two daughters pulling off a real-life Parent Trap, a divorced couple in Ohio got back together after nearly 10 years apart!
For a while, social media users have watched the love story between Julie Shore and Scott Gaede play out as their 24-year-old daughter Rachel Gaede documented their journey of falling back in love and getting engaged again on TikTok. Now, fans will see them enter their next chapter of life as a married couple (again)!
Almost a decade after their breakup, Julie and Scott tied the knot on December 28 at Memorial Hall in Cincinnati, Ohio. Rachel celebrated the news on the platform alongside footage of her parents on their wedding day, writing in the caption that it was a “successful parent trap.” She added over the top of the viral video:
“WAR IS OVERRRRRR our parents are officially REmarried and we are no longer children of divorce.”
Related: Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s Husband Had To Sneak Her Engagement Ring Into Prison!
Ch-ch-check it out (below):
@gachelraede successful parent trap ????????
♬ WAR IS OVERRR – sarah????
Amazing!!!
Of course, many people in the comments section pointed out how this was a real-life version of the Parent Trap. While the family loves the comparisons to the beloved film, Rachel told People on Friday that the story is more “Parent Trap-esque.” How did Julie and Scott find their way back to each other? Let’s rewind real quick!
The pair met over 25 years ago when Julie’s sister and brother-in-law set them up together. Just two weeks into their relationship, Julie remembered Scott had been “in love” and all in on their romance. However, they did not rush into an engagement! The lovebirds dated for three more years and had a year-long engagement before tying the knot in 1997. They then welcomed their daughter, Rachel, in 1999 and their youngest daughter, Caroline, in 2003.
But years later, the family fell apart. In 2014, Julie and Scott decided to separate! Julie explained to the outlet that they had been dealing with “communication” problems in their marriage, and it got to the point where they could no longer be together:
“I think where we first broke down was really communication and just losing that element of being able to speak and really hear, really listen and understand one another.”
So sad! Four years later, they finalized their divorce and began their new lives. Julie and Scott even dated other people during this time. However, things changed when the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020. Both Rachel and Caroline moved in with Julie. Due to their grandmother’s age, the trio wanted to a strict quarantine guideline in order to be able to keep seeing her. As for Scott? If Scott wanted to see their girls, he was told to follow the same rules as the three women. And that is when Julie and Scott started to reconnect! Julie said:
“He would visit during that time, and that’s what brought him back into my world or brought each other back into each other’s world.”
During that time, Rachel and Caroline noticed a spark between their parents again. Rachel even asked her mom about what was going on between them, recalling:
“I was like, ‘You have a crush on Dad and you’re lying about it and you haven’t told anyone.’ She was like, ‘No, I don’t. No, I don’t.’ I could tell that she believed that she didn’t. I was like, ‘Okay, girl, whatever.’ I think it was a week later that she came down into my room and was like, ‘I have to tell you something. I think I have a crush on your dad.’”
OMG!!
Unfortunately, the family experienced some tragedy between 2020 and 2021. Scott lost both of his parents, along with his father’s business partner. During the funeral of a family friend, Julie shared that she suddenly had an “epiphany” and knew she needed to be with Scott again:
“That was my moment where it was very much, we have to be together, and it’s beyond whatever problems we had. Whatever problems existed just fell away. It was nothing that we couldn’t work out at this point in the new versions of ourselves, which I think is super important to say. Who we were standing there hand in hand at that point needed to stay together and we needed to be a family again, because truly, it’s all that matters.”
Fortunately, Scott felt the same way. When they knew they wanted to make things work between them, he said they went on a trip to the Pacific Northwest to “hash out our past.” And their intense talk worked! Shortly after the getaway, Julie and Scott purchased a new home and lived together for the first time since 2017.
At first, they were in no hurry to get married again. When Julie’s mom began to experience more health problems, though, they decided to expedite the process and get engaged. Rachel express:
“Our grandma has always been such an active supporter, a huge fan of my parents, of our family. Her getting to witness, to hear about, to hear the stories about the proposal was just so important to all of us that when she wasn’t doing well, I was like, ‘Okay, let’s get this kicked off and let’s do this.’”
Caroline and Rachel worked together to get their mom out of the house, dressed up, and with a fresh coat of nail polish on for the proposal. When Scott got down on one knee, Julie said he asked:
“Are we going to do this again?”
And of course, she said yes! Although the family experienced a ton of ups and downs over the years, Scott says he wouldn’t change a single detail of how their story happened:
“The way we look at it is just … in the whole arc of our marriage as a single unit … the divorce was just part of our relationship. I do think that we both said in different ways, if we didn’t go through the divorce, we would’ve never been able to get back together.”
We are so glad Julie and Scott got their happy ending! Reactions, Perezcious readers? Let us know in the comments below!
[Image via Rachel Gaede/TikTok]
