Star Trek icon George Takei surfaced last week in Los Angeles in a rare public sighting with his longtime husband Brad Altman.
The 88-year-old actor was seen leaning on a walking stick and clasping his 72-year-old spouse’s hand for support as he hobbled along on his way.
Dressed comfortably in sweats and an anorak, the longtime gay rights activist at one point linked arms with Altman, whom he has been with since 1985.
Altman was more formally dressed, opting for a purple button-down shirt tucked into his jeans and accessorizing with a camel-toned blazer.
Takei and Altman, the first same-sex couple to apply for a marriage license in the gay enclave of West Hollywood, exuded wedded bliss as they strolled in the sun together.
Their outing comes nearly two years after Takei revealed the secret to their long-lasting union, which took them down the aisle in 2008.
‘He keeps me laughing and he keeps me getting angry. I think it’s sharing these emotions,’ Takei said, acknowledging they are ‘opposites,’ via People.
‘Brad is a strict disciplinarian. Brad is detail-oriented, he’s organized and he brings that detail and organization to my life so that I can do what I do.’
By way of example, he offered that Altman will demand they ‘leave the apartment in five minutes’ at a point ‘about 20 minutes before I need to leave.’
He explained the discrepancy, saying: ‘We understand each other. When he’s giving me only five minutes, I know we have 20 minutes.’
The two men first met when they were part of a gay running club in the 1980s and Takei noticed the ‘dashingly good-looking’ Altman, he told Variety.
Altman pointed out that for the first two decades of their relationship, he ‘was never identified publicly as George’s boyfriend or partner.’
Takei, a Japanese American who spent part of his childhood in a US internment camp during World War II, had already been a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War but remained mum on the subject of his own sexual orientation.
‘I was silent, and it was totally against my character,’ said Takei. ‘The one cause that was the most personal to me, I had to stay quiet on because I wanted my career.’
The veil of silence was torn open when Takei announced his relationship to Altman in 2005 in an interview for the gay magazine Frontiers.
While Trekkies had been more or less aware of his homosexuality for decades, the declaration of his romance was his official coming out to the general public.
Three years later, when gay marriage was briefly legalized and then rapidly banned again in California, Takei and Altman seized the opportunity to exchange vows.
‘We were married at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles at the Democracy Forum venue,’ Altman remembered.
Their wedding party contained two of Takei’s iconic Star Trek co-stars – Walter Koenig, known to fans as Chekov, was the best man, while Nichelle Nichols, who won the hearts of viewers as Uhura, served as ‘best lady.’
