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Openly gay Gov. Jared Polis has announced his engagement to his boyfriend of 17 years, Marlon Reis.
Ries broke the news to The Colorado Sun on Wednesday (March 3). The proposal, however, came at a delicate moment last December: Reis was on his way to the hospital for treatment for a COVID-19 infection.
“I was getting my things ready. My daughter was crying in the corner — she didn’t want me to go,” Reis, 39, told the paper. “My son was asking me a lot of technical questions: ‘When are you coming back? Do they know exactly what’s wrong?’ It was a very tense moment.”
Related: Colorado governor Jared Polis signs new LGBTQ protections into law
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Gov. Polis entered the room, urging Reis to hurry up…then suddenly dropped to one knee.
“It was the absolute perfect time,” Reis said. “I said to him, ‘I couldn’t breathe before. Now I really can’t breathe.'”
“It put such a spring in my step,” Reis added. “When I got to the hospital I wasn’t scared anymore. I said ‘I have a great relationship, a great family that I’m going to be coming home to after this.’”
Reis went on to detail how the couple’s children had very different reactions. Their daughter, age 6, started to cry. Their 9-year-old son, however, told the couple he didn’t like their wedding rings.
Ah, family.
Polis & Reis have yet to set a wedding date, due in part to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Either way, we can’t wait to see the nation’s first openly gay Governor walk down the aisle with Colorado’s first gentleman.
Congratulations, gents.