After 17 Years of Marriage - and a Divorce - Couple Surprise Daughters by Remarrying: 'Successful Parent Trap' (Exclusive)

As it turns out, divorce is not always the end of the road. 

At least not for Julie Shore and Scott Gaede, who decided after nearly 10 years apart that their love story deserved another chapter. For the couple, who first met at 24 years old, it was about much more than just reigniting a flame — it was about bringing their family back together again. 

In the midst of watching her parents fall back in love and through all the logistics of planning an engagement and wedding, Rachel Gaede, 24, has chronicled the journey on TikTok through several videos garnering tens of millions of views.

An adorable video from the Dec. 28 wedding day, which she captioned "WAR IS OVERRRRRR our parents are officially REmarried and we are no longer children of divorce," has been seen over eight million times alone. 

“Successful parent trap," she added, referencing the 1961 film that was remade in 1998 starring a young Lindsay Lohan. Despite the comparison to the film, Rachel tells PEOPLE that it's really more “Parent Trap-esque."

"I think we have similarities to the Parent Trap story in the fact that we're two daughters whose divorced parents got back together,” she explains before adding that it was not the case of “getting a couple back together who weren't ready to be together yet.”

The couple first met more than 25 years ago when Julie's sister and brother-in-law set them up. After just a few weeks, Julie remembers, Scott was all in. 

"'Do you think it's possible to be in love with somebody after just two weeks?' " she remembers him asking her. 

After about three years of dating, and a year-long engagement, the two tied the knot in 1997 before welcoming daughters Rachel and Caroline in 1999 and 2003 respectively. 

In 2014, though, the couple decided to separate — breaking the news to Rachel the day after her middle school graduation. 

“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," Julie tells PEOPLE.

Years after the initial separation, their divorce was finalized in 2018. And with that, the now-former couple officially began their new lives as individuals, including dating other people. 

But in 2020, as it did for many families across the world, the COVID-19 pandemic turned their lives upside down. The girls were both living with Julie and because of their grandmother's age, they opted to keep a very strict quarantine in order to continue to see her. Scott was told that in order to continue seeing his daughters during that time, he would have to adhere to the same guidelines. 

"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 worlds,” Julie explains.

During this time, the girls began noticing a shift in their parents and at one point, Rachel asked her mom about the possible new spark. 

“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,' " Rachel remembers with a laugh.

She adds, "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.' "

Between 2020 to 2021, the family faced tragedy as both of Scott's parents died along with his father's business partner. During the funeral of the family friend, Julie had what she called an "epiphany."

"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," Julie says. "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."

When they realized it was something they were serious about seeing through, the parents of two knew there were things they had to figure out. They decided to take a trip to the Pacific Northwest in order to "hash out our past," Scott notes, explaining how important it was to make sure they were certain about their new relationship for the sake of their daughters. 

“If one of the girls was like, ‘You know what? This was all so traumatic for me and this is not a way that I can move forward,' then we wouldn't all be sitting here right now," Julie says.

Shortly after their trip, they bought a new house together and for the first time since 2017 the family of four was under one roof. And while the initial reconciliation of their parents came with an array of emotions for the daughters, they say they always felt good in knowing that their parents had been fine on their own and that this time was truly different. 

“I think that's what was exciting  — it wasn't the same. It was so different,” says Rachel. “I think getting to watch your parents fall in love is not something that a lot of people get to experience. You're born into a family where your parents are married or they're already together and then you grow up with them together. Maybe they separate. I think what was so special is getting to watch that happen and getting to see them love each other for the people that they had become as individuals.”

“We had proven that we were okay together, we were okay apart," Caroline adds. 

And while everyone seemed to know that moving in together again would lead to a second marriage, there wasn't a huge rush initially. Though in 2022, when Julie's mother was facing another bout of health struggles, the family was pushed to expedite the process. 

“Our grandma has always been such an active supporter, a huge fan of my parents, of our family,” Rachel says. "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.' "

The girls got to work in planning the perfect way to get their mom out of the house all dressed up and with freshly polished nails for the proposal. And while Julie admits she was “mad” on the day of, not knowing what the girls were up to, the result was "amazing."

She remembers Scott getting down on one knee and asking: “Are we going to do this again?" As part of the proposal, Scott gave his daughters two rings for Christmas made out of stones from their mom’s original engagement ring. 

The intimate ceremony took place in Memorial Hall in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Dec. 28, 2023 and was officiated by the couple's nephew who served as the ring bearer the first time around. Julie wore a dress that “had a little wisp that reminded me of my initial dress,” while the girls dressed in identical blue dresses — their mom’s favorite color. The three women wore jewelry belonging to Julie’s mother, who at 98 was unable to be with them in person.

Following the ceremony, the family had dinner and went "low-key bar hopping" before ending up at the hotel where the couple first wed all those years ago. 

Despite their ups and downs, the family agrees they wouldn’t change a thing on how their story has unfolded. 

"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," Scott says. "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."