9 Famous Gay Men With Younger Boyfriends: From Gay To December
As gay celebrities begin to feel more comfortable being open about their relationships, we're seeing they're not all that different from straight stars, who often date much younger than their age.
When we learned Tom Daley’s new boyfriend was none other than Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, gay tongues started wagging about the couple’s 20-year age gap. Of course, Daley isn’t your typical 19-year-old, and DLB looks like a million bucks—but it got us thinking about other high-profile gay romances with a significant age difference. Does some extra mileage on the odometer mean anything when you’re in love?
If the nine couples below are any indication, the answer is “yes, no, and maybe.”
Gerald McCullouch and Derrick Gordon
The storybook romance: Gordon, 22, is the first openly gay basketball player in the NCAA. McCullouch, 47, is a former cast member of CSI and appeared in the indie gay comedy Bear City. The two went public with their relationship at the NYC GLAAD Media Awards in May. “A night that I will never forget and a night that I didn't want to end,” Gordon tweeted about the evening.
Did they live happily ever after? Lets give these kids a chance!
Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black
The storybook romance: Daley, 20, came out in a heartfelt YouTube video last year, indicating it was love that sparked his newfound openness. Initially he avoided naming names, but he and Black, 40, started popping up on each others social media, and within months stepped out as a couple. The Milk screenwriter has even been to England to spend Christmas with Daley and his family.
Did they live happily ever after: Things are looking good.
Calvin Klein and Nick Gruber
The storybook romance: The fashion designer was 67 in 2010, when he began dating Gruber, a 20 year old model with a gay-porn past. Klein threw a more-lavish-than-lavish 21st birthday part for his boytoy at Indochine, a Studio 54-themed bash featuring guests like Anna Wintour, Donna Karan and Vera Wang and a cake with 21 sparklers.
Did they live happily ever after? Not quite. Klein finally ended things after Gruber was arrested for assault and drug possession. It looked like they rekindled the affair last summer, but nothing came of it.
After being tossed out of the Ascension party on Fire Island in 2013, Gruber now claims he’s not gay.
Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent
The storybook romance: Interior designer/TV personality Berkus, 42, lost his boyfriend Fernando Bengoechea during the tsunamis that devastated South Asia in 2004. But he found love again in 2012 with twentysomething Brent, a former assistant to Rachel Zoe.
Did they live happily ever after? Hopefully yes. The couple married earlier this year.
T.R. Knight and Mark Cornelson
The storybook romance: The former Grey’s Anatomy star was 35 when he started dating the 19-year-old student. “It’s bound to raise some eyebrows,” Knight admitted to Extra at the time. “But we love each other. [Mark] is an amazing guy. I love being around him I love what we have.”
Did they live happily ever after? Alas, no. Whether it was the age difference or something else, the guys eventually split and Knight began seeing Patrick Leahy in 2010. The couple married in October 2013 after three years of dating.
Marc Jacobs and Harry Louis
The storybook romance: What is it about designers and porn stars? Jacobs, onetime head of Louis Vuitton, started a heated romance with Brazilian adult-film actor Harry Louis, despite their 26-year age difference. The twosome’s courtship was chronicled in numerous Instagram pics and Twitter updates taken in exotic locales.
Did they live happily ever after? True to form, Louis took to Instagram to announce his and Jacobs’ split with a photo of the couple done up like a shattered picture frame. “Me and Marc have decided not carry on with our relationship as boyfriends,” he posted with the image. “We love each other very much, and that it was a decision from both!”
Of course it was.
Cheyenne Jackson and Jason Landau
The storybook romance: Jackson’s split from his partner of 13 years, Monte Lapka, went public when photos of the 30 Rock star with a shaved head and lots of new tattoos emerged online. After moving to West Hollywood, Jackson, 39, quickly found new love with the younger Landau, an aspiring actor.
Did they live happily ever after? If Jackson’s alleged sex tape is to believed, then hell yes.
Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy
The storybook romance: Isherwood, one of the great chroniclers of 20th century gay life, was 48 when he met 18-year-old Bachardy on Valentine’s Day 1953. The 30-year age gap raised eyebrows, as did Bachardy’s reputation as a hustler. But their relationship helped the two men flourish emotionally and creatively—Bachardy even inspired Isherwood’s A Single Man: “We’d been together 10 years. I was making a lot of trouble and wondering if I shouldn’t be on my own," recalls Bachardy. "Chris was going through a very difficult period [as well]. So he killed off my character, Jim, in the book and imagined what his life would be without me.”
Did they end up happily ever after? Despite affairs, arguments and separations, Bachardy and Isherwood remained together until Isherwood’s death in 1986. Bachardy still lives in the Santa Monica home they shared for decades.
Liberace and Scott Thorson
The storybook romance: Liberace was 57 when he hired Thorson, 18, to be his driver in the late 1970s and embarked on a five-year romance full of lavish presents, exotic vacations… and creepy plastic surgery. The closeted entertainer even managed to shoehorn Thorson into his Vegas act as a dancer. Did they live happily ever after? Um, did you see Behind the Candelabra?
Jonathan Adler and Simon Doonan
The storybook romance: Though now known as the king of kitschy interior decorating Adler was a young sculptor when he met Doonan, head merchandiser for Barney’s, on a blind date in 1994. “The bloke who set us up just had some intuition that we would hit it off ,” Doonanrecalled in The New York Times. “But he badgered me with lots of direct questions,” Mr. Doonan said. “In England people wouldn’t ask a lot of direct questions.” They wed in 2008 after 14 years together. Did they live happily ever after? After nearly 20 years as the design world’s Power Gay Couple, we’d say so.
Hadrian and Antinous
The storybook romance: Antinous became part of the entourage of Emperor Hadrian when he was still a boy, but at some point their relationship turned sexual. Hadrian married an aristocrat, Vibia Sabina, in 100AD but the couple had no children. (His heirs were all adopted.) Did they live happily ever after? Tragically, Antinous drowned in the Nile in 130 AD, sending Hadrian into inconsolable grief. He ordered the Greek youth deified as a god and named the Egyptian city Antinopolis in his memory. Archaeologist RJA Wilson wrote that Hadrian “turned to [Greek sculptors] to perpetuate the melancholy beauty, diffident manner, and lithe and sensuous frame of his boyfriend Antinous” in what has been described as “the last independent creation of Greco-Roman art.”