For Michelle and Scott Ellermets, 2023 was a year neither could have imagined.
They were living separate lives in the Washington, D.C., area, each expecting the future to look much like the past: growing older beside the person they had loved for decades, watching children build lives of their own, spending time with grandchildren and making plans that assumed their spouses would still be there.
Then, within the span of just five months, both of those futures disappeared.
Michelle lost her husband, Jonathan, to a heart attack in January 2023 after more than 23 years of marriage. Scott lost his wife, Lisa, in June after 29 years together; reports said she died following an illness.
At the time, Michelle and Scott did not know one another.
They could not have known that before the year ended, grief would bring their paths together — or that less than a year later they would stand beside the Atlantic Ocean as husband and wife while an extraordinary double rainbow stretched across the sky.
Their story eventually reached millions of people online.
But it began not with romance, and certainly not with a wedding.
It began with loss.
Good Morning America reported that Michelle, then 50, and Scott, 59, both lost their longtime spouses in 2023 and first connected in December of that year. Michelle had been married to Jonathan for more than 23 years before his January death, while Scott and Lisa had shared 29 years of marriage before Lisa died in June.
Two Lives Suddenly Changed
The death of a spouse can alter almost every part of daily life.
It is not only the loss of a loved one. It can also mean the disappearance of familiar routines, shared plans, private jokes, family traditions and the person who had been present for thousands of ordinary days.
The National Institute on Aging notes that grief after the death of a spouse can involve many different emotions and emphasizes that there is no single correct way to mourn. Connecting with family, friends, support groups or professional counselors may help some people cope.
Research indexed by the National Institutes of Health's PubMed database has also found that social support can play an important role after widowhood. One study of bereaved spouses specifically noted that some widows and widowers described connecting with people who had experienced similar losses — including through online widow and widower groups — as an important way of re-engaging socially.
That context matters to Michelle and Scott's story.
Neither of them joined a grief community because they were searching for a new romantic partner.
They were trying to understand a life that had abruptly changed.
Toward the end of 2023, Scott joined Facebook and an online group serving widows and widowers in the Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia area.
While browsing the group, one profile caught his attention.
It belonged to Michelle.
Not because he knew her, but because Facebook showed something unexpected: Michelle was connected to his sister.
Scott decided to send her a message.
It was a small action, the kind of online interaction that might easily have gone nowhere.
Instead, it changed both of their lives.
According to GMA, Scott joined the local bereavement community in December 2023, noticed Michelle was Facebook friends with his sister and reached out. The two soon decided to meet in person.
At First, It Was Simply Friendship
There was no dramatic declaration of love.
No instant plan for remarriage.
Michelle and Scott began as friends.
That distinction became important when they later spoke publicly about their relationship.
Both were still learning how to live after losing partners with whom they had spent decades. They understood a kind of grief that many people around them could sympathize with but could not fully share.
Michelle told TODAY that early in their conversations, she mainly felt that she wanted to be Scott's friend and help him through his grief. But each time they met, she discovered something new about him that interested her.
They kept finding common ground.
They were both parents.
They were grandparents.
They shared interests, values and a strong faith.
They enjoyed similar activities and had compatible ideas about what they wanted from the years ahead.
And their conversations had a habit of lasting far longer than intended.
GMA reported that the pair would sometimes meet for what was supposed to be a short coffee or drink, only to realize hours later that the day had nearly disappeared. They said they discovered common interests, shared faith and similar experiences as parents and grandparents.
There were also surprising connections between their families.
According to PEOPLE, Scott later discovered that Michelle's son and his nephew had known one another. Their lives had, in a sense, been circling the same community before they ever formally met.
The friendship felt unusually natural.
Still, Michelle was not expecting marriage.
At one point, she told Scott she did not think she would ever marry again.
Five months later, that idea would look very different.
When Friendship Turned Into Love
Grief does not move according to a timetable.
Neither does love.