--- title: 20 Years After Same-Sex Marriage Was First Legalized, Queer Couples Reflect on How Their Lives Changed | TIME description: Twenty years ago, Massachusetts became the first state in the U.S. to legally recognize same-sex marriage. Some of the couples who were the first to wed in the state spoke to TIME and shared their stories. canonical: https://time.com/video/UJRilkhW/ og:title: 20 Years After Same-Sex Marriage Was First Legalized, Queer Couples Reflect on How Their Lives Changed og:description: Twenty years ago, Massachusetts became the first state in the U.S. to legally recognize same-sex marriage. Some of the couples who were the first to wed in the state spoke to TIME and shared their stories. og:url: https://time.com/video/UJRilkhW/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/UJRilkhW/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 20 Years After Same-Sex Marriage Was First Legalized, Queer Couples Reflect on How Their Lives Changed twitter:description: Twenty years ago, Massachusetts became the first state in the U.S. to legally recognize same-sex marriage. Some of the couples who were the first to wed in the state spoke to TIME and shared their stories. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/UJRilkhW/poster.jpg?width=720 --- * U.S. # 20 Years After Same-Sex Marriage Was First Legalized, Queer Couples Reflect on How Their Lives Changed > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 20 Years After Same-Sex Marriage Was First Legalized, Queer Couples Reflect on How Their Lives Changed [Watch (HLS stream): 20 Years After Same-Sex Marriage Was First Legalized, Queer Couples Reflect on How Their Lives Changed](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/UJRilkhW.m3u8) (8:11)  _Published 2024-05-16. Twenty years ago, Massachusetts became the first state in the U.S. to legally recognize same-sex marriage. Some of the couples who were the first to wed in the state spoke to TIME and shared their stories._ --- May 21, 2024 7:29 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [First Couples Say 'I Do' in Taiwan After Same-Sex Is Marriage Legalized](/video/yW969hau/) ### First Couples Say 'I Do' in Taiwan After Same-Sex Is Marriage Legalized [Taiwan Has Approved Same-Sex Marriage in a First for Asia](/video/xaBppiXU/) ### Taiwan Has Approved Same-Sex Marriage in a First for Asia [Germany's Parliament Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage](/video/nlv2tm7g/) ### Germany's Parliament Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage --- ## Transcript We did envision something like a marriage, but probably more like a second class citizen because we just couldn't imagine that our relationship would ever be acknowledged by the state or by government. Tonight, gay couples throughout Massachusetts are celebrating a day many thought might never come. After a three year fight, they're now legally getting married. My name is Michelle Coleman. We live in Boston, Massachusetts, in the neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, and I'm 63. And I am Pam Waterman. I live with her obviously. I am 58, so the hot young fans. I'm 78. I'm 83. And we've been together 53 years. We started 20 years ago with, you know, kind of starting this whole journey together in a married couple, and now we're entering retirement together. So it's kind of exciting. We met at work. We were at the NYU School of Medicine. And I was the administrator for the neurology department, and Pam came in as a scientist. And that's where we met. But I think, you know, just a little bit about our student. Because she was really mean to met very first day, and it cracks me up 27 years later still. You were working well, you were working there first. Children's mental health agency in Connecticut. And I came in and I heard there were pingpong games going on at lunchtime. And I loved to play Ping Pong. And Gloria was the Ping Pong champ of the agency. And all the time, they tried to find somebody who could beat her. And they bring people in and nobody beat her. Well, I thought, Well, yeah, I think I can probably play against this woman. So I did play, and I dethroned her. And I'm surprised she continued seeing me, but she did. And what we did is we hooked up and played doubles, and we beat everybody else, didn't we? We did for a lot of years. Yeah. And then we just gradually started to get to know each other. I taught you to play tennis. I taught you to play go play golf. And then finally we came out to each other, which back in those days was a scary thought because I was barely out to myself and come out to each other was very, very frightening. But we did, and We couldn't we just couldn't help ourselves. We fell so much in love over a whole years period of time, but it took us that long to really settle into the possibility that we could really be together, and we wanted to live together. We met at a Christmas party. The end of the night, we were like, Okay, so how about if you haven't done Christmas shopping, why don't we get together and do Christmas shopping? So that was, like, our first date December 1994. I mean, I wanted to marry Michelle. I had no There was no conflict there. It was, in fact, We don't even remember who asked who to get married? I mean, I think once it was that thing, we were just like, Okay, so when. And we've been together 33 years. So it was kind of a long engagement. Gli would not say that she would marry me all that whole 2.5 years, three years. I kept asking. She said, Don't ask me until it's legal. What's the day that they announced the case, 'cause we knew that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts was about to announce their decision about the case. In November of 2003. At that time, you would go to your computer and bring up umbrella and keep hitting refresh every morning to see if the Supreme Judicial Court had decided. And when they did, you know, we didn't really know what to do at that point. We, you know, got dressed, put our suits on. We went down we headed downtown on the street, you know, we were jumping up and down, doing high fives. The day we were riding up to Boston to hear the decision, it came out over the radio that we had won the case, and Gloria just burst into tears. And she's not a big prior. And I have to say, you have to stop crying. I want to ask me. Will you marry me? Okay, turn around. Together, ten years, but still the pre wedding jitters for Ed almeli and Mike Horgan. Shear panic at first. Trying to think of everything we needed to do. There were three couples in Boston. That got married the first day of the plaintiff couples. We had all these news cameras and media and talking to us and whatnot. And I think they thought that maybe one of us was going to show up in a dress or something because when they start it all happening and they saw, like, our parents there when we were dancing and our siblings were there, and the minister was there, and they were kind of, like, almost bored, you know? It's like, why is this news? It's just a wedding. We needed then to go to Town Hall to apply for our marriage license when we won the right to marry. And I was so excited and proud to go to Town Hall that day. There were a whole group of people we didn't know they were going to be there, and somebody had an accordion. They were playing going to the chat Bowl everybody in Townhll singing along October 10, 2004. Fall is your favorite season. Follow it is my face. And so I know that was significant. We liked the idea of ten ten. We thought there's no way in heck, we're going to forget those dates. The funny thing was, I think, leading up to it, which I was pretty calm because I knew I wanted to get married. But for some reason, I don't know. I became hysterical. Before the wedding. And you know, when I I knew it was time to get ready to go out. I was just I was just feeling like I was laughing, I was crying. I was screaming. I was really hysterical. Hysterical. I was hysterical. We have a top five days in our relationship, and that is one of the top five days in our relationship. Absolutely. I mean, people say, Well, you've been together all those years. Did it change. It changed for me. Unbelievably 'cause I felt like we were finally able to hold our heads up high and be in the world and be just like everybody else. Every interview you kept saying, you know, like, why do you want to get married? Why do we want to get married? So we would constantly say because we love each other and we want to be with each other. And it was kind of like, nice to hear from each other, you know, day by day kind of thing. And then getting married, you know, people say, Well, what's the difference? It's like, Well, the difference is you're now a team, we get to be integrated into each other's families like seamlessly now because we're not a friend, you know, that's Ed's friend Mike and Mike E, you know. So even the society now has words for us. You know, I say husband, all the language of marriage and family suddenly applies. And we started getting cards and letters and all kinds of things from people who were just thrilled that we were willing to do this because they wanted to get married. 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