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Same-Sex Couples Make History in New York

By DNAinfo Staff on July 24, 2011 4:09pm  | Updated on July 25, 2011 8:57am

By Dan Marrin and Jill Colvin

DNAinfo Staff

DOWNTOWN — Phyllis Siegel, 77, emerged from the City Clerk’s office, her arms outstretched in jubilation. Her partner of nearly two-dozen years, Connie Kopelov, 85, in her wheelchair, clutched their wedding certificate, holding it for the gathered crowd to see.

After years of false starts and heated debate, the grey-haired Chelsea couple became the first same-sex spouses in New York City, marking the path for hundreds of other men and women, some of whom have waited decades for their wedding days. 

Inside the East Chapel just before 9 a.m., the pair, both wearing blue shirts and beige pants, approached the altar. Kopelov, a retired labor educator and activist, stood with a walker, and they clasped hands.

“We are gathered here today, in the presence of family and friends to join together this couple in the bonds of matrimony,” City Clerk Michael McSweeney said.

“Phyllis, will you have Connie, to be your spouse, and live together with her in the institution of matrimony?”

“I do,” said Siegel, a retired bookkeeper and accountant.

“Will you cherish her in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, keep yourself only unto her so long as you both shall live?  

“I will,” Kopelov said.

And with that, McSweeney said the magic words: “By the authority invested in me, by the laws of the state of New York, I now pronounce you married. You may seal your vows with a kiss.”

Cheers erupted in the room as guests, including City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and her partner, Kim Catulo, stood in tears.

“I am breathless,” Siegel said following the ceremony, which was broadcast on TV for all the world to see. “Its mind boggling, the fact that’s it’s happening to us — that we are finally legal and can do this like everyone else,” she said.

Siegel and Kopelov were selected to be the first among Manhattan's 459 couples to tie the knot because of their limited mobility.

After they were finished, five other couples selected by the city wed, followed by the throngs who had gathered outside to celebrate the historic day.

Upper West Side musician Alicia Svigals, 48, and psychotherapist Ellen Marakowitz, 53, got their marriage license just after noon Sunday after 21 years together.

The couple met as neighbors living at West 89th Street and Amsterdam Avenue and have raised two sons together, aged 15 and 10.

Svigals said that as the debate over same-sex marriage raged on in Albany, their 10-year-old son placed a call to Republican state Sen. Greg Ball’s office asking for his help. During the debate Ball was one of the swing votes on the issue.

“My mom wants to marry my other mom. So will you please tell Senator Ball to make it legal?” he asked.

The couple said that after spending their lives together, the wedding is cause for celebration, but just makes official their commitment of more than two decades.

For Hell's Kitchen couple Daniel Hernandez, 53, a real estate planner, and Nevin Cohen, 48, and environmental studies professor at the New School, the ceremony was a bittersweet victory after years of litigation.

The pair, who met in 1998, sued the city in 2004 demanding the right to marry, but lost their claim in an appeals court.

"Long time waiting, right?" asked Deputy Clerk Alisa Fuentes, as she took her place in the chapel before performing their wedding.

Dressed in matching navy sport jackets with yellow orchids pinned to their lapels, the men exchanged their vows using silver-colored rings.  

"Will you have Nevin to be your spouse and live together with him in the institution of marriage?" Fuentes asked.

"I do," the two men said.

"By the authority vested in me by the laws of the state of New York, I now pronounce you...married."

Fuentes later explained: "I was going to say 'husband and husband,' but we decided to just say married.”

Following the ceremony, Hernandez was overwhelmed.

"To have achieved this in my lifetime and see so many couples who have been loved and living together, to see them finally become part of a greater community of loving couples is phenomenal,” he said.

“Finally we’re not going to have to be ashamed or feel like second-class citizens,” he said.

Harlem couple Michael Roberts, 81, and Michael Johnson, 55, were also married by McSweeney 30 years after meeting at the West Indian Day parade. They were engaged this winter.

After exchanging their vows and wedding rings, Roberts read an Apache vow, which Johnson repeated, line by line.

“Now we will feel no rain,

for each of us will be shelter for the other.

Now we will feel no cold,

for each of us will be warmth to the other.

Now there will be no loneliness,

for each of us will be companion to the other.

Now we are two persons,

but there is only one life before us...”

Roberts later said they chose the vow because “it is not sexist and doesn’t appeal to any God.”

Harlem couple Douglas Robinson, 60, a bank project manager, and Michael Elsasser, 56, a textile designer, who arrived at the chapel with their adopted sons, Zachary Robinson, 22, and Justin Robinson, 25, had also personally fought through the court system for the right to marry.

Their ceremony was performed by Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Doris Ling-Cohan, who in 2005, had ruled the men had a constitutional right to marry. Her decision was later overturned. 

The pair had no doubts when Ling-Cohan asked whether they took each other as spouses.

"You bet your life I do!" Robinson exclaimed before they exchanged their rings.

After the ceremony, Robinson said that he felt proud to be a New Yorker on his wedding day.

"It was very emotional for me," he said. “It was the culmination of decades of love and struggle and support."

But the fight is not over.

Danny Beckwith, 56, and Marc Verzatt, 63, of Morningside Heights, together for 21 years, had wanted to hold their wedding at the Cathedral of St. John the Devine, where Beckwith works, but were told they weren’t allowed.

Instead, they’re planning a ceremony at Morningside Park Monday morning, the day Verzatt turns 64.

Still, the couple of 21 years said they were grateful to the city for making the process of getting their license so easy.

“I expected it was going to be like going to the DMV, like going through a big government wheel. Instead, I felt treated like royalty,” Verzatt said.

And while it was a long-time coming, many couples remained overwhelmed.

Yolanda Potasinski, 55, executive director at Congregation Habonim on the Upper West Side, and attorney  Nancy Mertzel, 48, were the first couple to be wed after six who had been selected by the city. The couple met in 1991 at the synagogue and have been together 18 years.

"It's a dream come true. I just can't believe it,” Potasinski said.

“It's a validation that we are human beings and a very important step for New York.”

With pool reports from Michael Barbaro of the New York Times, Sally Goldenberg of the New York Post, Chris Hawley of the Associated Press, Lore Croghan of the Daily News and Esme Deprez of Bloomberg News.