There are now between 820,000 and 930,000 same-sex married couples — up from 390,000 in 2014, according to various reports.
A few months after Frank Bennedetti and Gary Trowbridge met, they went to a wedding. It was 1964. They stood at the back of the church. Trowbridge took Bennedetti’s hand and he whispered, “This is as close as we’ll ever get.”
It was the easiest, surest commitment of their lives, and for the first 50 years of their relationship, they never believed they’d make it up the aisle themselves.
“It just seemed too far-fetched,” Trowbridge said. “I really didn’t think we’d ever get married.”
They did tie the knot in July 2014, on their 50th anniversary, at New York City Hall. But same-sex marriage was still illegal in North Carolina, where they lived, and in more than a dozen other states, so it didn’t feel completely real.
Then, in June 2015, the Supreme Court announced it would rule in Obergefell v. Hodges. Bennedetti and Trowbridge traveled to the courthouse in Washington, D.C., to see if the far-fetched had become a reality. When the Court announced same-sex couples would be allowed to marry no matter where they live, Bennedetti and Trowbridge cried, celebrated and hightailed it home to marry in their own state.
“We felt so relieved and justified,” Bennedetti said. “We had been fighting for this for so many years, but at long last, it was happening.”v
