Tanya McCloskey and Marcia Kadish didn't set out to make headlines when they got married on May 17, 2004.
That morning, McCloskey and Kadish were the first same-sex couple to get legally married in the U.S. after being together for nearly 20 years.
The Boston-area couple picked up their marriage license minutes after midnight in Cambridge, Mass., and received a waiver that allowed them to bypass a three-day waiting period to perform the ceremony.
Kadish and McCloskey exchanged vows later in the morning at Cambridge City Hall.
The fact that they were first in line was by chance. They'd planned on arriving early, Kadish says, "because we wanted to go to everybody else's wedding. We wanted to participate all-day-long in weddings."
Their legal marriage — and the hundreds of others performed for same-sex couples across the state that day — were the result of a ruling from the Massachusetts Supreme Court, which had declared in November 2003 that same-sex couples had the legal right to marry in the state.