Former National Football League (NFL)
player Jeff Rohrer will marry his boyfriend on Sunday, making him the
first known NFL player in a same-sex marriage.
According to The
New York Times, Rohrer, 59, and Joshua Ross, 36, will
exchange vows at a ceremony at Wattles Mansion Gardens in Los
Angeles. The ceremony will be conducted by the Rev. Jon Olson, a
Universal Life minister. Roughly 150 guests are expected to attend.
The pair met three years ago at a
crowded gay bar in West Hollywood, California.
Rohrer's football career – six
seasons with the Dallas Cowboys – was sidelined by an injury. He's
now a successful commercial producer. Rohrer was previously married
and has two children.
“I've given at least five people
heart attacks with this news,” Rohrer said, referring to his
sexuality. “But for the most part, many of my closest friends,
including some of my former teammates with the Cowboys, could not
have been more happy and supportive.”
Rohrer credited his fiance, the founder
of the skin-care company SkinLab, with turning his life around,
saying that before he met Ross he was “completely in the closet.”
“And if not for Josh, I'd still be in
there,” he said.
Rohrer said that he believes he was
born gay but that “being gay was just something that had no place
during the course of my football life.”
“But when I got divorced, I said the
hell with it, I'm going to do what I've always wanted to do,” he
said. “Then I found Josh, and began to openly live the life I was
born to live.”