Judi and Beverly
“When you say you’re married, no matter who you’re talking to, they understand what that means.”
"Despite the laws in the state of Indiana, I pronounce you married."
Judi met Beverly in 1967. At the time Beverly was seeing someone else, but not long after Judi started dating Beverly’s best friend Phyllis. Judi moved in with Phyllis and her two children, and the two were together for ten years until Phyllis passed from diabetic complications. Not long after, Beverly and the woman she was seeing at the time broke up, and the two started dating.
By the time that marriage equality first started being talked about, Judi and Beverly had already been together for almost thirty years. In 1991, when Judi heard that someone in Hawaii had asked for marriage equality and was denied, it sparked a fire in her. When asked by someone at the Unitarian Universal Church of Bloomington to keep an eye on the Marriage Equality Act, she stepped up and ended up taking over the entire operation. Judi led the charge, sending out postcards, going to the state house, and leading union rallies.
For their 30 year anniversary, Judi and Beverly decided to drive to Niagara Falls Canada and get married. They were one of the first same-sex couples in Spencer, Indiana to get married. The two of them had a private ceremony there in October of 2007 and a ceremony in Bloomington for friends and family a couple of months later in January of 2008 at the Unitarian Universal Church.
Beverly was nine years older than Judi and had had deteriorating health since 2003 when she underwent quadruple bypass surgery. After years of battling her heart condition and multiple strokes, Beverly passed away in 2016. Judi thinks their marriage made a huge difference, both personally and legally, especially when it came to her being able to take care of Beverly during her years in and out of the hospital and rehab.
When asked whether politics are endangering marriage equality, Judi expressed her fear for young LGBT+ people in the age of Trump and emphasized how important the Spencer Pride community and others like it are to being a family for LGBT+ people, especially when they have lost their own families.
Judi has since remarried to Lucie this past March (2019). The two of them met on a Facebook page for gay widows. For more on this story, listen to the Just Married podcast episode.
