Jerry Rapier and Kirt Bateman met in 1995 at Desert Star Playhouse in Murray, where Bateman worked in the box office and Rapier had a close friend starring in the show. The couple fell for one another quickly and moved in together two weeks after their first date.

Sixteen years later, Rapier is producing director of Plan-B Theatre and Bateman is executive director of the Davis Arts Council. The two theater fans travel to New York to see performances multiple times each year. When they realized they would be in Manhattan the same day that gay marriages would become legal, they entered a clerk’s office lottery to be among the pioneering couples of New York’s new law.

The pair plan to celebrate Pioneer Day, Rapier quips, by “making honest men of each other.”