A villa balcony on the French Riviera, a riverfront venue in New Braunfels, Texas, and a Phoenix courthouse lunch that turned into a 50-year marriage: an unusual statistic sits behind these scenes. Roughly one in 20 divorced couples, it's believed, end up remarrying each other — and a recent feature followed three of them to find out how it happens.
The most cinematic of the three is Brittany and Brian Kendall of Lubbock, Texas. After a 13-year marriage ground down by two medical educations, constant moves for residencies and two kids, they split in 2021 and deliberately bought two smaller houses on either side of the neighbourhood pool, so custody hand-offs stayed easy. Dinner dates with the kids continued. Somewhere between his gardening hobby and her renewed interest in his opinions, the spark returned — colleagues at the hospital where they both work noticed before they did. In 2024 their children stood with them on a Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat balcony as they recited vows again before 20 guests dressed all in white. Brian's verdict on whether the divorce was necessary? Yes — it was.
Then there's the long game: JoAnn and Jay, married in 1965 when she was 18, divorced quietly in 1972 because JoAnn couldn't hold the house, pool, job and child together any longer — and because, in that era, married women could struggle to get credit without a husband's signature. Three years later, a wisdom-tooth surgery and a lift home from the Hilton in Phoenix changed everything. Jay took a demotion to show he'd changed, and they remarried in 1976. JoAnn went on to write more than 100 novels; Jay storyboarded many of them, then spent retirement climbing mountains and building wooden boats. When Parkinson's put him in hospice care in Olympia, Washington in 2022, he was still making her laugh — joking that her all-black wardrobe made her Queen Victoria mourning plan entirely feasible.
The third couple, Megan and Dylan near San Antonio, are the rawest story: three years of marriage undone by a newborn, a hard postpartum, the pandemic and Dylan's infidelity. Her revenge era included tracking his truck on the Ford app; his passwords were variations on "hatemegan22". Two years of therapy, an ADHD and depression diagnosis, and a job move that put him 10 minutes from her and their son softened things. The "Dad's going home now" routine became theatre — he kept coming back after bedtime. In July 2026 they remarried at a riverfront venue in New Braunfels, their son suited up beside them, a daughter due in March.
Why does this belong on a travel site? Because two of these second weddings are genuine destination material. Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, perched between Nice and Monaco, is one of the Riviera's most exclusive corners for small villa weddings, and New Braunfels on the Comal and Guadal rivers has become a firm favourite for Texas Hill Country celebrations. Even the Lubbock set-up is a lesson in planning: sometimes the answer isn't a new place, but two smaller ones side by side. For anyone drawn to stories of second chances — or scouting locations for a wedding round two — there's plenty to steal here. Details drawn from a feature by NZ Herald Travel, in partnership with The Washington Post.
