How Your Favorite LGBTQ+ Couples Met And Fell In Love: "I Met The Most Beautiful Soul I Had Ever Met In My Entire Life"

Singer Monifah and Terez Thorpe were the first to have a Black lesbian wedding on national television when they tied the knot on R&B Divas in 2014. According to Thorpe, they met through friends of friends all because her favorite restaurant ran out of her beloved garlic roasted chicken, and she was told by one of those friends that there would be food (buffalo wings) at a concert Monifah was having. “It was the first time I’d heard her sing live and she blew me away!” Thorpe told Out in 2014. “The rest is history and we’ve been inseparable ever since.”

While Mock recently shared that she stepped out on her relationship with the “Pose” star, it seems they’re still together. The actor, who plays Lil’ Papi on the show made quite the impression on Mock as her marriage to Aaron Tredwell was coming to an end in 2019. He shot his shot at her after she directed an episode of their hit show. She told Out in 2019 that he helped her embrace vulnerability in their relationship.

The Styling Hollywood stars first met around 2010 when they were set up by Bolden’s barber. As Curtis, a music industry executive, told Variety, they met for a drink not with romantic intentions in mind, but “under the guise of business.” Things went very well despite that with the two hitting it off. “I knew early on in the relationship where this was going to end,” Bolden told the magazine.

The longtime loves met on the dancefloor at a nightclub in NYC way in the early ‘90s and didn’t marry until 2017. “I met Georges right on the dance floor at the Limelight disco at 6th Avenue and 21st Street on his birthday in 1994,” he told Interview Magazine in a 2019 interview. What drew the icon to LeBar was the fact that there was a man out there much taller than him, and the dance moves the birthday boy pulled out. “I had to go over and say, ‘Who are you?’ What are you doing?’ ‘Can I put my arms around you?’ Because I’m tall, I’ve never been able to put my arms around someone’s shoulders who was taller than me.” There was an age difference of more than a decade with RuPaul being 34 at the time and LeBar 21, but they made it work and have been together since.

Billy Porter and Adam Smith met in 2009 at a dinner, where the actor made sure to sit next to Smith so he could woo him. While the two dated for a short time, they split in 2010 and managed to remain friends for years. The feelings never left though, and Porter told PEOPLE that after going to see Hamilton together in 2015 on Smith’s birthday, they professed their love for one another. “I felt it, and the tears came, and I pulled over, and he said, ‘I love you, and I’ve always loved you, and if there’s any chance, I would like another shot — I would like us to have another shot at this,’” Porter recalled to the publication. “He was the one that got away — so it wasn’t hard. The yes came easy and immediately!” The pair married in 2017.

The legendary comedian first laid eyes on her wife Alex, who she’s been married to since 2008 and shares two children with, on a ferry to the gay resort Fire Island in New York. She saw her and immediately was taken with her. “Something really said to me – like, audibly – ‘Wow, that’s what you need, Wanda,’” she told The Guardian. The two would later be randomly introduced by a woman after Sykes told her about wanting to remodel her kitchen. That woman introduced her to Alex, who, thanks to fate, sold granite countertops.

Wiley told BUST Magazine that before she met future wife Lauren Morelli, a writer for Orange Is the New Black, she was impressed with her. “I just remember her coming to set and me being able to watch her be a boss from afar, telling whatever people to go this way, answering this question. Just seeing her literally be the person in charge was really attractive to me,” Wiley said. She also told the magazine that their relationship started as a friendship, where Morelli confided in her about all of her feelings regarding her sexuality (she was married at the time to a man), way before they became romantic. “I remember those first months with her, trying to figure out her journey with her own sexuality. Feeling like she picked me as the person she was going to talk to about all of it. And it wasn’t sexual, it was just like a friend,” she told the magazine. “There was something deeply intimate about that, whether there was sexual tension there or not. The deep intimacy of being two people talking about the core of who we are. Talking about our journeys. Not even necessarily flirting on set, but on the phone, thousands of miles apart, talking about Who are we? And does this make me a different person? Does this actually make me who I am now? That’s how we fell in love.”

After marrying two men, Niecy Nash surprised everyone when she married Jessica Betts in 2020. She said the two hit it off after going out simply as friends for crabs and wine while she was in New Jersey filming a project. “I saw her differently in that moment and I was like, ‘hey girl…’” When asked when she knew Betts was something special, Nash told the ladies of Red Table Talk that she knew it when she realized she was being fully seen for the first time in her life. “I met the most beautiful soul I had ever met in my entire life. After spending time together I was like, oh honey this fits me like an old pair of jeans I done had in my closet my whole life,” she said. “It was something that said, ‘I don’t want to be away from this energy.’”

While little is known about how these two met, they’ve revealed in interviews that they connected more than five years ago, they went 50/50 on the first kiss, and cooking Dutch baby pancakes helped bond them. The Dutch baby was actually one of the first things I ever made for Raven,” Pearman-Maday said, to which the actress responded, “and now I’m married!” during a recent interview with Access Hollywood.