The Sexy Husbands of Gay Celebrities
From the altar to the tabloids, celebrity marriages are always under public scrutiny. And recently there might not be anything more gossip-worthy than a celebrity sam-sex marriage, at least for the more-recognized half of the duo. To even the scoreboard, we are profiling the "the other half" of famous gay unions to prove that power couples are a team and not just the one who gets the most attention on the red carpet.
Jwan Yosef
As Ricky Martin's husband, Jwan Yosef gets plenty of attention because he is a star in his own right. The gorgeous Syrian-born Swedish painter first stepped out with Martin in 2016, announcing to the world that they were dating.
Martin reportedly saw some of Yosef's work on social media and reached out to him. "I'm scrolling and I see this beautiful piece of art and I'm like, 'Whoa, how cool! Who's this?'" he told Andy Cohen on his Sirius XM talk show. "Then I start checking and all of a sudden I'm like, 'Ooh, ooh.' And then I wrote to him."
Yosef graduated from Central Saint Martins, and moved to Los Angeles in 2016. Before that, he opened his own art studio in the UK where he worked diligently at his craft. He is now an award-winning artist and the founding member of The Bomb Factory Art Foundation based in London.
Martin and Yosef were married in 2017 and a year later they welcomed their daughter Lucia Martin-Yosef into the world. In 2019, the couple announced the birth of their son Renn Martin-Yosef.
Adam Smith
Billy Porter is probably best known for his role as Pray Tell on the successful FX network series "Pose." His husband, Adam Porter-Smith, wanted to become an actor himself, but it didn't work out, so he became a swimwear designer and is now the owner of The Smith Society, a brand of unique bathing suits.
"Gender-specific doors in the world of apparel have been knocked down in the last four or five years, and much progress has been made with the degendering of fashion," said Porter-Smith in Queer Forty. "My design aesthetic was emboldened as I watched gay culture and beyond embrace silhouettes and new ideas around what we wear and the tone it sets in a new and more open world of fashion."
The couple got engaged in 2017 and married nearly a week afterward. Smith said to Playbill, "I should create 'How to Plan a Fabulous Wedding in 10 Days' because I had 10 days!"
David Burtka
Although David Burtka has made a name for himself, he often gets overlooked because his husband is Neil Patrick Harris. Harris' iconic role as Doogie Howser has solidified his place in pop culture history as well as his role on "How I Met Your Mother," where the couple actually worked together.
However, Burtka reportedly put his acting career on hold to become a professional chef and attended the famous culinary art school, Le Cordon Bleu in Pasadena. From there, he started his own catering company and today he continues to show off his kitchen skills whether it is writing a culinary arts book or appearing on the "Rachael Ray Show." But mostly Burtka, who was recently a guest judge on The Food Network show "Beat Bobby Flay," is a fun-loving father to the couple's fraternal twins. His Instagram is filled with family photos taken at Disneyland or at a restaurant.
Jaymes Vaughan
Actor Jonathan Bennett is best known for his role as Aaron in the 2004 cult classic "Mean Girls" and is married to television host Jaymes Vaughan. The two tied the knot in Mexico in the spring of 2022.
Vaughan is a former Las Vegas Chippendales dancer who appeared with one of his fellow strippers on "The Amazing Race" in 2012.
He is also currently a cast member in the reality soap "The Real Friends of WeHo" and co-owns the LGBTQ+ travel company OUTbound, which he described in Out Traveler:
"It's gay cruising that's not a circuit party. We are fun. We are a safe space. We are these dream destinations that you want to go to. We do it all together as a family. Queer safe spaces are very important to us. It feels like our chosen family is doing this stuff with us, which is one of the most special things about being a queer person. People show up exactly for who they are. I can't think of anything more special than that."
Justin Mikita
Justin Mikita and his husband, actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson, tied the knot in 2013. Mikita is a lawyer, LGBTQ+ activist, and sits on the board of the Human Rights Campaign. He was also the development director of The American Foundation of Equal Rights and was instrumental in restoring marriage equality in California by fundraising. As a co-partner with the company Tie the Knot, he consults with celebrities looking to endorse a charity.
"We'll either work with the celebrity on a cause and partner them with established organizations or help them start their own," he said in Out Magazine. "Or we'll work with organizations and help them find ambassadors."
Michael Turchin
Lance Bass' husband, Michael Turchin, is an actor who has starred in a couple of low-budget horror movies over the past few years, but he is also a visual artist. His vibrant pop art style celebrates Tinseltown in a playful way. Art Sugar describes his work as a "unique use of vibrant color, dynamic patterns, and unmistakeable [sic] humor..." Bass and Turchin began dating in 2011 and got married in 2014. They became dads to twins in 2021 through a surrogate.
Dustin Lance Black
Dustin Lance Black is an American screenwriter, director, and producer. His husband is Olympic gold-medal diver Tom Daley. But Black has won some prestigious awards himself, including an Oscar in 2009 for his screenplay "Milk," which chronicled the life of Harvey Milk, the San Francisco politician who was assassinated in 1978. He also won the Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award in 2012.
Black is also a former member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a topic he explored in his FX mini-series "Under the Banner of Heaven," based on the 2003 book of the same name written by Jon Krakauer.
"It felt so true to me and then had all of these layers that I hadn't yet examined about my childhood faith — my family's faith still — and how I had grown up in it," Black, said in a video call with the New York Times. "It was formative for me."
Daley and Black got engaged in October of 2015 and got married in 2017. A year later the couple announced the birth of their son Robert Ray Black Daley.