CelebsNews

Lesbian/Bi Celebrity Girlfriends, Part 2

After your favorable response to our first article on the subject, we decided to take another look at the (often) behind-the-scenes women who love and support the higher-profile women in their life.

Most of them are not yet as well known as Portia De Rossi (wife of Ellen DeGeneres) or Tammy Lynn Michaels (partner of Melissa Etheridge), but we thought you’d like to get to know a little more about them.

Melanie Goldstein (fiancée of actor Kirsten Vangsness)

Just this week, Kirsten Vangsness, the out star of the CBS crime drama Criminal Minds, announced her engagement to longtime girlfriend Melanie Goldstein, an assistant editor on Fox tv show 24.

Goldstein proposed to Vangsness in November, but the couple only recently shared the news with family and friends.

They told People.com that they plan to marry this Spring at the Texas home of Goldstein’s parents, with Vangsness adding, “and since it’s not official anywhere until things change — which I have total confidence that they will — we’re going to do it there just to completely thumb our nose at the government.” The two met five years ago at a party Vangsness was attending with her then boyfriend. Vangsness told AfterEllen.com in an interview in September, “I remember looking at her across a table and just thinking, ‘Oh sh*t – oh sh*t! – everything is going to change.’ And it did – gradually.”

Vangsness separated from her boyfriend and ultimately came out, but after a rocky attempt at a friendship with Goldstein, the two of them didn’t speak for several years. Vangsness told us,

“I sent her an apology letter – you know, because when you come out, you kind of lose your mind. You turn into a 13-year-old again. So I sent her this apology note. She was living her life, and I was living my life, and I didn’t expect things to happen. I was just saying, ‘Hey, I’m sorry, and I just wanted to let you know that I’m out now, and I think I’m more sane, and I just wanted you to know that and to say that I’m sorry.’ So I was just sort of cleaning up my stuff.”
The apology worked, and the two have been together ever since. Vangsness told People.com, “I never thought I would want to do it. Then when you meet the person, you’re like, ‘I want to marry you. I don’t care if there’s a law against it!'”

Freddie Fagula (partner of musician Beth Ditto)

Gossip front woman Beth Ditto has always been an out performer, and by her side throughout her career has been her partner of nearly eight years, Freddie Fagula. Originally from the Northwest, Fagula uses masculine and feminine pronouns and identifies as a gender deviant queer.

Fagula’s MySpace bio describes a difficult upbringing:

The only child of repressed right wing born-again christian fundamentalist who is also an only child. Thank god for punk rock, public radio, Phranc, Public Enemy and the Redmond Fire House for reaching into my cloistered suburban youth and steering me onto the dark path a plan to follow for the rest of my life. Don’t want to forget where I came from and how I got here. As much as I love to disco dance, it wasn’t gay bars that saved my life. Also I really like to observe the summer and winter Solstice…
We asked Fagula for more details about her life with Beth, and here’s what she told us:
I think being a celebrity’s partner is not for everyone. It helps to have a strong sense of self and sense of purpose in your own life. Having an independent personality helps me because there are a lot of demands on her time, even if I travel with her, she’s basically at work.

In Beth’s case, she’s in a band with three other people, which is like having another set of partners. They are like in-laws to me.

Our lives feel so intertwined sometimes. The upside is really in the uniqueness of the experience. I’ve been able to travel and see art and meet people I would not be likely to meet if Beth weren’t Beth. And I’m able to watch someone I love and respect grow and transform into this public icon, and I can’t think of anyone more deserving.

As a feminist, she’s an inspiration to me.

Dr Staci Gruber (wife of writer Patricia Cornwell) Mystery novelist Patricia Cornwell has historically kept a low-profile despite years on the best-seller list. But she’s been surprisingly forthcoming since her February 2005 marriage in Massachusetts to Dr Staci Gruber, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Associate Director of the Cognitive Neuroimaging Laboratory at McLean Hospital.

And Cornwell is the first to say that marriage has changed her.

In December 2007, she told The Telegraph UK:

I finally feel rooted somewhere. I feel a sense of responsibility and stability that I didn’t have before. I hadn’t been in a long-term relationship since I got divorced in 1988 and it’s hard to live that way. Being with someone who is smart and gives good advice adds tremendously wonderful elements to your life.
The couple met when Cornwell went to Harvard to research neuroscience and met Gruber. Cornwell described it as, “one of those things: you meet someone when you’re not looking. I’ve never been a soapbox person for gay rights, but now I’m in a same-sex marriage I tend to be more open, because I am outraged that it should be illegal in other states.” Public information about and photos of Dr. Gruber are scarce, but if you’re scientifically-inclined, you might enjoy reading one of her many research articles.

In an interview with USA Today in December 2008, Cornwell elaborated on their relationships:

We never get tired of just talking. We are great friends and have a wonderful time together. And we’re not into exotic entertainment. We’re really rather simple. We like to have pizza and watch comedy on TV or watch a DVD. We watch stuff you’d never think we’d watch, like White Chicks and Blades of Glory. Staci says, “If people could only see you, it would all be shattered in a moment.”

Rena Brannan (wife of actress Sophie Ward)

UK actress Sophie Ward made big waves when she came out as a lesbian in December 1996, only two years after playing a married woman with children who falls in love with another woman in the television adaptation of Joanna Trollope’s novel A Village Affair.

According to Ward’s official website, soon after coming out she fell in love with Korean-American poet/writer Rena Brannan, “on Santa Monica Boulevard. Rena agreed to sell her pick-up truck and move to England and now she lives in Gloucestershire with Sophie and the boys and a hot water bottle.”

Today, Ward and Brennan (who have been married for nine years), are recognized as a celebrity couple worthy of inclusion in a Valentine’s Day article about relationships in The Independent.

Ward told The Independent back in 2006:

When I met Rena, we liked each other immediately. We’re from very different backgrounds and there wasn’t a chance we could get together at that time; it was impossible. But there was this chemistry and we eventually started working out how to be together. Although we are very, very different, we are the same age and have the same cultural references: books, films, plays, politics. We are also both very strong-willed but agreed early on that we would never pitch our wills against one another. She is very unpredictable and I’m still never sure what she would think about things, so I always want to know her opinion. She always has something interesting to contribute. Making love work is throwing your lot in with another.
Brennan elaborated on what makes their relationship work:
Initiative is really important. The sexiest thing on the planet is if your partner goes off and does something, without you having to say you’d like a box of chocolates. The desire to try to understand each other is still really great in both of us.

We are very, very passionate. We are not dramatic but we have a passion for communication and our relationship is definitely intense. It’s like learning about someone for the whole of your life. It’s like an art project.

After 10 years, we’re still probably in the honeymoon period and I think it will be like that my whole life with Sophie.

Jana Welch (partner of writer/editor Linda Villarosa)

A marketing executive for a NYC-SOHO based global advertising/marketing agency, Momentum Worldwide, Jana Welch is a native of Port Arthur, Texas, who at the age of three told her parents she was moving to New York City when she grew up.

She did, and that’s where she met her partner, Linda Villarosa, at a party 14 years ago.

This is how Welch remembers it:

I had heard that Linda was one of the hottest lesbians walking the planet, but I had actually never seen her in person. The woman I was with at the time whispered excitedly in my ear that Linda Villarosa was there — on the other side of the room.

As Linda made her way through the sweaty crowd, she walked right up to me and asked in a very colorful way, “Who does your hair? I need a new hairstylist”. We became fast friends. Our romantic involvement did not start until about five years later. Lucky me.

We have two amazing children who make everyday exciting as well as rewarding. We spend a lot of time reading, cooking, traveling and watching movies together. We play this game over dinner every night where we share the best and the worse thing that happened in our day. Our daughter is approaching teen years so she keeps this stage of dinner pretty exciting for us all.

Speaking of parenting, Welch and Villarosa were also named two of the “Most Powerful Lesbian Moms in America” on the lesbian blog, Mombian. Welch enjoys snowboarding, motorcycling, reading, making jewelry and carpentry, and somehow also finds time to direct and edit video book trailers, including one for Jacqueline Woodson’s novel, Feathers (watch it here), and one for Villarosa’s latest book, Passing for Black. You can watch it at www.lindavillarosa.com.

Read the first installment of Lesbian/Bi Celebrity Girlfriends, and suggest a celesbian girlfriend/partner/wife for us to include in a future installment in the comments (only out and openly acknowledged significant others will be profiled).

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button