Celebrity Friday: Jim Nabors Marries Male Partner

Jim Nabors, the former star of the television show Gomer Pyle, USMC has come out as openly gay and married his longtime male partner in Washington on January 15, it was reported recently. Nabors, 82, and Scott Cadwallader, 64, have been together for 38 years (when they were 26 and 44!) and travelled from their home in Hawaii to marry in Seattle soon after it became legal thanks to the passage of Referendum 74 in the November 2012 elections, according to Hawaii News:

A judge performed the marriage ceremony in the privacy of their hotel room with a couple of friends who live down the street from them near Diamond Head as witnesses, Nabors said. 

Before they were married, Nabors said, "It's pretty obvious that we had no rights as a couple, yet when you've been together 38 years, I think something's got to happen there, you've got to solidify something.  And at my age, it's probably the best thing to do." 

Nabors said he met Cadwallader in 1975 when Cadwallader was a Honolulu fire fighter.  He eventually went to work for Nabors and they began a relationship.

Interestingly, Nabors says he was out toco-workers and friends while he was busy in show business in the 1960s and 1970s