Petrelis Files

Best New York Times Lesbian Wedding Notice Ever: Thea Spyer & Edith Windsor

(Thea Spyer, left, and Edith Windsor, right)

I admit I have a weakness for reading the gay and lesbian wedding announcements in the New York Times on most Sundays, just to see who among the gay-o-stocracy is getting hitched and meeting the high standards the paper demands before they'll tell readers about your wedding.

Straight or gay, of all races, the Times' wedding pages always feature newlyweds with a few characteristics in common - personal or family wealth, college degrees often from Ivy League universities, or high-powered executive positions. You just don't read about Joe the Plumber and Steve the Bartender marrying each other. But I digress.

This past Sunday I read what I consider to be the most emotionally moving and terrific human story of all the gay and lesbian NYT wedding announcements ever to hit the pages of the Gray Lady.

It was about the decades-long courtship and life-stories of Thea Spyer and Edith Windsor, two senior lesbian partners who've lead colorful lives, who I very much look upon as two of my many symbolic lesbian mothers and part of my extended gay family, even though I've never had the pleasure of meeting these women.

I adore how starting with their rather old-fashioned names, Thea and Edith, to their beautifully aged faces and the bright lipstick on their lips, on to a quote about the rough life of queer bars in the 1960s they experienced, to that telling detail of dancing with holes in the stockings, and the Times ending on the note of the decades it took them to finally tie the knot, these lesbians forged a path for themselves and their collective families and now I know about them.

From the Times:

Thea Clara Spyer and Edith Schlain Windsor were married in Toronto on Tuesday. Justice Harvey Brownstone of the North Toronto Family Court officiated at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel.

Dr. Spyer (above, left) is 75. She is a clinical psychologist with a private practice in Manhattan. She graduated from the New School for Social Research and received a master’s degree in clinical psychology from City University of New York and a Ph.D. in that subject from Adelphi. . .

Ms. Windsor, 77, who is retired, worked in New York as a computer systems consultant for I.B.M. She was a board member of Social Services and Advocacy for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Elders, also known as SAGE, from 1985 to 1987 and from 2004 to 2006. She graduated from Temple University and received a master’s degree in mathematics from New York University. . .

“Everyone lived in the closet,” Ms. Windsor said of lesbian life in New York in the 1960s. “The only place to go was bars, and they were rough.”. . .

Dr. Spyer recalled of Ms. Windsor that night, “We danced so much and so intensely that she danced a hole through her stockings.” . . .

Dr. Spyer, who has become a quadriplegic as a result of advanced multiple sclerosis, said of the weekend, and her time spent with Ms. Windsor: “It was a feeling of complete delight in being with her. I had a real sense of ‘I’ve landed in my life.’ ”

That was 40 years ago.

Dr. Spyer had the help of three aides who traveled with her to Canada to officially marry Ms. Windsor, ending an engagement that began in 1967.

Congratulations, Thea and Edith, for finally making honest women of one another! Click here to read the full wedding notice.