Worth the wait! After 54 years together, two men named Jack Evans and George Harris are finally legally married in their home state of Texas.
Evans, 85, and Harris, 82, were two of the first people to get married on Friday, June 26, after the Supreme Court's historic ruling on same-sex marriage. According to Dallas' NBC affiliate, the longtime couple were given a marriage license in the city on Friday and were married soon after by Judge Dennise Garcia.
The two, who both spent decades fighting for LGBTQ rights and marriage equality, wore sharp suits with red ties for the happy occasion. The men were surrounded by reporters and revelers at the Dallas County Courthouse, where they signed their marriage license together — the first handed out at the courthouse after the ruling.
Evans and Harris previously tied the knot in 2014, but were not legally recognized as a married couple in Texas until today. The two activists met at a party in 1961 and spent the decades since working side by side on causes that mattered to the two of them, including LGBTQ issues in Dallas.
"Our real focus has been our legacy for the community, that our whole lives have been trying to improve, to encourage the young people to make a difference,” Harris told Dallas' D magazine last year. "They think they can walk down Cedar Springs holding hands, and it's just automatically come to that, but there was a lot of struggle to get there."
As LGBTQ rights improved in Dallas over the years, Harris and Evans held out hope of getting legally wed. Harris told Dallas' CBS affiliate earlier this year of the chance to officially exchange vows, "I said, 'Lord, let me live long enough to see that. Because I know it's gonna happen. And I can't believe… every day I can't believe that we're even talking about marriage!"
