53 years ago, Jack Baker and Michael McConnell became the first same-sex couple to wed

It might surprise you to know that America’s longest-married same-sex couple will celebrate their 53rd anniversary this September. “Wait, what?” you might say. Well, if you don’t know their story, then I’m happy to tell you!

Nearly 60 years ago, Michael McConnell met Jack Baker. “Jack was fit and handsome. His dazzling movie-star smile and subtle charm had my heart aflutter,” recalled Michael. “I figured this had been a terrific one-night stand, and I’d never see Jack Baker again.”

But that’s not what happened. A romance developed, and a year after they met, Jack did something crazy that most likely would have made the straight world scoff. He proposed, as a man, to Michael, another man, unheard of in the spring of 1967. And that’s when their long road to getting married began.

It began when Jack left the Air Force with an honorable discharge after an airman complained about an unwanted advance. In 1969, after leaving the military, Jack’s focus shifted to seeing to it that he could legally marry Michael. He enrolled in law school at the University of Minnesota. “This would enable me to work on my promise to Michael – to figure out a way for us to legally marry,” he thought.

“There was nothing in the Minnesota statute that mentioned gender. We were old enough to get married. I was a resident in the state, and nothing said that we could not get married,” Jack pointed out. “Whatever isn’t prohibited by law is permitted. That’s the first principle that we learned in law school.”

Further, there were no laws that specifically forbade a man marrying a man, so on May 18, 1970, Jack and Michael obtained a marriage license in Hennepin County, Minn. When they finally married in September of 1971, lawmakers — at that mostly all narrow-minded men — woke up and started to turn the wheels of justice against same-sex marriage.

The legality of their marriage hinged on the interpretation of Minnesota's laws, and so one-by-one, the law began to turn on their marriage. First, Gerald Nelson, clerk of district court in Hennepin County, rejected their license. That’s when the couple initiated legal action in the court, seeking to compel Nelson to issue the license. That case would go all the way to the Supreme Court, supported by the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union.

In the interim, with the law in limbo, it was a race against time for Jack and Michael to marry. Clearly, they anticipated denial by SCOTUS, and the attention they drew to their unconventional marriage started to be paid by other legislatures to cement that a marriage was between a man and a woman — not two men.

While the case over the legitimacy of their marriage license was making its way through the courts, they got creative to protect their relationship. Michael adopted Jack, which involved Jack legally changing his name to the gender-neutral Pat Lyn McConnell

They then went to a different county, Blue Earth, that only required one person from the couple to get a license. After Michael secured the new license, they raced to exchange vows, which they did on September 3, 1971.

“The most important thing I remember about the day we were married was that we had to get those marriage certificates into the registrar's office right away,” Michael said. “I also remember that it was extremely hot. We were enduring a brutal heat wave at the time.”

“But as for the day itself, I just remember that it felt good. It seemed like a really great day. And I don't know that we felt differently about each other. We still felt the same. But what I felt was that we were going to accomplish this mission. And we did.”

They also remember that the day was filled with so much love. “The air conditioner was off during the ceremony, so you can imagine how hot it was, but what we felt more than the intense heat was all the love in the room that day and all the support we were receiving,” Jack said fondly.

Their friends rallied around them, planning the wedding, making their white wedding outfits and matching macramé headbands, photographing the event, and baking a wedding cake with two grooms atop.

“They took care of every detail,” Michael emphasized. “And they had to improvise by breaking apart two male/female bride and groom figures and creating two male groom figures for the cake.”

Jack and Michael’s rings were particularly special, fashioned by a jeweler friend.

“Our rings are so meaningful to us,” Jack said. “When we put our rings together, they say, ‘Jack loves Mike’…when you reverse the sides, they say, ‘Mike loves Jack.’”

“I honestly didn’t think we would pull the wedding off, but we did, and it was just one big celebration,” Jack reflected. “The whole thing really seemed like a dream to us.”

That was until the media reported on their wedding, causing Blue Earth County to also deny the legitimacy of their license. And October 10, 1972, a month after their wedding, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal of their first marriage license, issuing a one-sentence order stating, "The appeal is dismissed for want of a substantial federal question."

When Edie Windsor won her Supreme Court case in 2013, fighting for her 40-year same-sex relationship to be recognized, the ruling opened up marriages in Minnesota. But for Jack and Michael, getting yet another license would amount to admitting what they did in the 1970s was wrong.

Finally, when Jim Obergefell and others in same-sex relationships won the right for all to marry in 2015, Jack and Michael’s SCOTUS ruling from 1971 was overturned, and their marriage license was deemed valid. Because of this, they officially became the very first legally licensed same-sex married couple in the world.

“It took 44 years for the country to catch up to what we were saying way back in 1971,” Michael observed. “And the reason that we believe it took that long, especially for the gay community, is that the community started to be defined as ’sexual beings, sexual orientation’ rather than who you love and commit to. What we talked about back then was love, friends, family, community, and building your life together and loving one another and those around you.”

Jack said that for them, the goal was always to have that love recognized. “And when attitudes started to shift from sex to relationships after more and more people came out to their friends and family, that's when the fight for gay marriage really took off.”

And to that end, Jack offered some no-holds-barred advice. “If you rely on a sexual relationship to sustain you, that will fail over time because sex gets old,” he quipped – much to Michael’s chagrin.

But Jack went on. “That's the big mistake most people make," he said. "It's got to be based upon a commitment and a working relationship. The bottom line is that young gay people today have to love themselves first and understand that they are just as important as everyone else and they have a right to marriage under the Constitution in our country just like everyone else. And they shouldn’t take that for granted.”

From the upcoming book, Love: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality , Rizzoli June 2025