Nigel Owens, a legendary referee in the rugby world, was married to his now-husband last weekend in a ceremony overlooking the ocean at a resort in Wales, in what Owens called “an amazing day” and “proudest of my life.”
Owens, 53, married his longtime partner Barrie Jones-Davies, a schoolteacher, at a wedding that had a bit of a rugby theme, Wales Online reports, with one table named Principality Stadium, a well-known stadium in Wales.
It’s easy to see why getting married to Jones-Davies was such a proud moment for Owens. After coming out as gay in 2007, he talked about the internal trauma he went through wrestling with his orientation, saying he became bulimic and thought about chemical castration.
Get off the sidelines and into the game
Our weekly newsletter is packed with everything from locker room chatter to pressing LGBTQ sports issues.
Those days are long gone, with Owens and Jones-Davies managing a farm together in the Welsh countryside. Days after the wedding, Owens posted on Instagram about the thrill of returning to the farm and seeing a newborn calf.
Owens and Jones-Davies are embarking on a quest to become parents via adoption, an effort Owens discussed last year:
“There’s not too much I can say at the moment about the process itself, but we are both incredibly excited. It’s something that we’ve spoken about for a few years now and it’s taken a while to get here, but now that it’s happening we can’t wait, although I must admit it’s also a little nerve-wracking.”
