Rod+John

Let's take a little photographic journey of Rod and John that spans 23+ years.

MAR' 1994

15

OCT' 2002

23

JUL' 2005

10

NOV' 2006

5

OCT' 2012

10-27

JUN' 2014

28

We do go way back...

On my first visit to a gay bar for my 21st birthday, John was the very first man to ever come up and talk to me.  While I won't post the totally inappropriate comment that was made in that first verbal exchange, I will say that I knew he was the one at that exact moment.   My mother had always said, "you will know the one when you meet them."  He was the one.  He just happened to be in a long-term relationship, so I had to wait 8+ years before we took our friendship to the next level. 

That is how way back in 1994, we began a friendship that lasts to this day.  In 1994, I was a skinny little 143 pound kid.

Life happened and we both grew up quite a bit.

In October of 2002, I ran into John once again at the same gay bar [After Dark, in Fort Wayne, Indiana].  John and I had each just recently become single...  After so many years as friends, it was with excitement and trepidation that I invited John over to the house for dinner.  Over the course of bacon-wrapped turkey filet mignons,  roasted asparagus, and mashed potatoes, John revealed that he was leaving Fort Wayne for a new position in Indianapolis.  For over 3 years, John and I commuted back and forth between his new home in Indianapolis and my old historic home in Fort Wayne.

In July of 2005, I finally made the move to Indianapolis.  With a transfer to the Indianapolis office of my previous architecture firm, John and I ventured out to build a new home together in the downtown area of Indy.

We designed a new home in the historic Herron-Morton Place neighborhood.  Construction began in April of 2006 and was completed in early November of that same year.  We turned the housewarming party of our home into a commitment event affirming our relationship to 143 close friends and family present. 

Despite this commitment ceremony and all of our legal paperwork, our attorney began telling us right around our 10th anniversary that we needed to legally be married to protect our relationship fully.

John and I celebrated our 10th anniversary in October of 2012 with a trip to Sicily and Italy. I also started scheming to figure out where we could legally get married in the United States. We started planning a wedding for June 28th, 2014 in Chicago, but that was quickly shot down by our attorney when he told us that they still had an archaic interracial marriage law that would immediately strike down our marriage when we crossed the state line back into Indiana. The planning began again… …little did I know that we were destined to still be married on June 28th, 2014.

On June 25, 2014 the state of Indiana suddenly began issuing marriage licenses to gay couples when a judge struck down the ban, but I knew it wouldn't last long before the Governor struck down the court-ordered action.  While I begged John to marry me in the courthouse downtown immediately before we lost that chance, John was adamant that our family be present for our wedding.  We planned a wedding in one evening!  We were able to get all of our siblings, our parents, a few close friends, and even Uncle Tom to Indiana within 3 days to witness our wedding on June 28th, 2014.  Despite Governor Pence's decision to cease allowing all gay marriages on June 27th, we still had the marriage license and proceeded with the wedding in our back yard. John’s amazing brother officiated our wedding!