Woman’s Parents Came Out After Dad’s Affair. Inside Their ‘Crazy’ Story (Exclusive)

Haley Archuleta wasn’t expecting her TikTok to “blow up” when she opened up about her family’s unique story. But it did.

In the July video, which has received over 6 million views and 723,000 likes as of Saturday, Sept. 21, the content creator shared that her parents and her stepgrandma are all members of the LGBTQ+ community. She also mentioned that her dad had an affair while married to her mom, who, as fate would have it, ended up forming a lasting friendship with his ex.

“I’m proud of my family,” Haley, 27, tells PEOPLE of their unique story, ” so I didn’t really see any shame behind sharing it.”

Haley, who is also gay, says parents Heather and Mike were high school sweethearts from Utah. They married in 1990, but a few years later, she says that her dad began having an affair with Jake Rosquist, a man he met at a gay bar in Salt Lake City.

Rosquist, who tells PEOPLE he and Mike are just friends now, says that he used to be religious and that the pair used to pray together to figure out what to do about their relationship. “My philosophy was if he’s gay, he shouldn’t be married,” he says. “So I told him to tell Heather.”

Heather, 53, says she was pregnant with Haley’s brother Holden when she learned of the affair. According to Rosquist, 56, she found out when she caught them together on the phone. 

But while Mike, 54, was secretly having an affair, his stepmom was having her own clandestine relationship with a woman named Raz — who was Rosquist’s roommate at the time.

Amid the family drama, Heather shares that Rosquist and his then-partner — Rosquist and Mike stopped seeing each other after Rosquist learned Heather was pregnant — were invited to an annual family Christmas party at Mike’s stepmother’s home in 1992. 

“I was so pissed,” Heather says. “He showed up at the party. I wasn’t super happy about it. Of course, I just had a baby.”

But Heather, who was 21 at the time, says it was inevitable that they would run into each other at some point.

But a funny thing ended up happening: they hit it off and became fast friends — and have been ever since. As a testament to their closeness, Haley says she calls Rosquist her “guncle,” an affectionate term to refer to a gay uncle.

“We both just started talking with each other … and by the end of the night, she was my person,” Rosquist, now a real estate broker, says of Heather, a self-employed corporate meeting and event planner.

As time went on and they began to spend time together, including at gay bars, she eventually ended up coming out, too. And after she began a relationship she ended up meeting through friends, she says she “never dated guys again” — and today, she’s been with her partner Jamie for eight years.

But even after Heather and Rosquist hit it off, the path to healing took years.

When Haley was 5, Heather says she and Mike divorced, which he felt devastated about. “He did not want to get divorced,” she says. “He didn’t want to break up his family.”

“We tried it for a little bit,” Mike tells PEOPLE in a separate interview, but adds that they “both knew” there was no going back.

“Eventually we just grew further and further apart until, I mean, literally, Heather had the strength to say goodbye,” he adds.

Today, Mike, who has been married for five years to a man named Jake — “I know, ironic,” he quips — and says that he and Heather have a “pretty amicable relationship.”

“I always try to make sure that we can all be together so that we can experience life with our kids together,” adds the dad, who now works for his parents, who have a heating and air business that his son just took over.

And despite their history, he says he and Rosquist are friends, too.

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Rosquist tells PEOPLE that while he is not proud of his affair with Mike, he doesn’t “regret it because somehow Heather and I were supposed to meet.”

Mike also admits he could have done things differently, but that he’s glad he was able to put himself on a path to “help find myself a life that I needed” and was able to “finally” be “true to myself.”

Haley tells PEOPLE that Utah was a difficult place to grow up in with both of her parents being open about their sexuality.

“I would have kids be mean to me if they found out,” she says. “I had friends find out my home situation, and they were literally told by their parents they couldn’t be friends with me anymore. So it really hurt me as a kid.”

Haley, who now lives with her girlfriend London in Florida, says she tried to “push being a lesbian away” and that she had a hard time coming out to her mom and dad because she didn’t want people to think, ‘Oh, she’s just gay because her parents are gay. ‘ ”

But now she says she knows that “I was born this way.”

Haley tells PEOPLE that she feels their story is something that “people can relate to” or can at least help open people’s minds. “I currently have four parents that I love,” she says — and she says her stepgrandma, who is still alive, has found happiness with her longterm partner.

“I just feel like everything’s kind of an invisible string, and it’s kind of hard to grasp,” Haley adds. “It took years of processing it for me to be able to tell this story, but it’s so crazy.”

Heather says she was shocked by the response after Hayley’s post went viral but joked she thought their story was meant for TV.

“I was very surprised,” Heather remarks. “We always said when all this first happened, probably five, 10 years after all this, we’re like, ‘You know what? We could be on Oprah.’ “