--- title: Kennedy Center Honors for Lily Tomlin: Her History with TIME description: The actress will be celebrated at the Kennedy Center Honors gala on Sunday canonical: https://time.com/3616957/lily-tomlin/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-12-03T23:03:57.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T02:33:14.807Z article:section: History og:title: Kennedy Center Honors for Lily Tomlin: Her History with TIME og:description: The actress will be celebrated at the Kennedy Center Honors gala on Sunday og:url: https://time.com/3616957/lily-tomlin/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcd02fb088f8d3b83/69876c7dcd68485c4409866f/1101770328_400.jpg?branch=production&width=400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 400 og:image:height: 225 og:image:alt: Mar. 28, 1977, cover of TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Kennedy Center Honors for Lily Tomlin: Her History with TIME twitter:description: The actress will be celebrated at the Kennedy Center Honors gala on Sunday twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcd02fb088f8d3b83/69876c7dcd68485c4409866f/1101770328_400.jpg?branch=production&width=400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Time Lily Tomlin Rejected the Cover of TIME > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Dec 3, 2014 11:03 PM UTC  The Mar. 28, 1977, cover of TIME The Mar. 28, 1977, cover of TIME TIME  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Dec 3, 2014 11:03 PM UTC On Sunday, Lily Tomlin will be celebrated as one of this year’s recipients of the prestigious [Kennedy Center Honors](http://www.kennedy-center.org/programs/specialevents/honors/) — and she’ll be, as _The Advocate_ [reports](http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/2014/09/09/lily-tomlin-become-first-out-lesbian-recipient-kennedy-center-honors), the first out lesbian to be given the prize. Tomlin wed her long-time partner Jane Wagner last year, but she wasn’t always public about her sexuality. As Tomlin put it, while speaking to the [Washington _Post_](http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/lily-tomlin-has-led-a-singular-comedic-life-and-thats-the-truth/2014/12/03/595daa88-7187-11e4-8808-afaa1e3a33ef%5Fstory.html) for an in-depth profile, she resisted going public about her sexual orientation for a long time though she “never did _not_ come out.” And, she added, TIME offered to put her on the cover in 1975 if she would come out — an offer she rejected. “I wanted to be acknowledged for my work,” she told the _Post_, “I didn’t want to be that gay person who does comedy.” As Fishbowl NY has [noted](http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/lily-tomlin-kennedy-center-time-magazine%5Fb234539), Tomlin did appear on the cover of TIME two years after that — and as it that happened, she got her wish. The cover proclaimed her the New Queen of Comedy, and the story inside focused on her career and its development, not her personal life. There’s a brief aside about her decision to study medicine after high school, when other girls where getting married, but no space is devoted to her romantic life. She is, as she had hoped to be, a comedian — with no qualifiers. That’s true even though the story does read quite differently in retrospect, in at least one respect. Jane Wagner, now Tomlin’s wife, is quoted as a “friend and collaborator” (Wagner has written and/or produced some of Tomlin’s best-known work); it’s also noted that they live together in Los Angeles. Though perhaps it would not have been the case in 1975, Tomlin now manages to be both out and a no-qualifiers-needed comedian, one who’ll appear next year in Netflix’s new series _Grace and Frankie._ And, on the other side of the story, TIME got its wish too: two decades after the Tomlin story ran, [Ellen DeGeneres’ coming out](http://time.com/vault/issue/1997-04-14/page/1/) made the cover of the magazine. **_Read the full story, here in the TIME Vault:_** [Lily Tomlin, New Queen of Comedy](http://time.com/vault/issue/1977-03-28/page/68/) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3616957/lily-tomlin/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3616957/lily-tomlin/"},"headline":"The Time Lily Tomlin Rejected the Cover of TIME","datePublished":"2014-12-03T23:03:57.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T02:33:14.807Z","description":"The actress will be celebrated at the Kennedy Center Honors gala on Sunday","url":"https://time.com/3616957/lily-tomlin/","keywords":["Media","Comedy","LGBT","People","ellen"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcd02fb088f8d3b83/69876c7dcd68485c4409866f/1101770328_400.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcd02fb088f8d3b83/69876c7dcd68485c4409866f/1101770328_400.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Mar. 28, 1977, cover of TIME","caption":"Mar. 28, 1977, cover of TIME","creditText":"TIME","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/media/","name":"Media"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3616957/lily-tomlin/","name":"The Time Lily Tomlin Rejected the Cover of TIME"}}]}] ```