Not every famous woman had marriage in mind, and in some cases, their love lives involved secret relationships or decades-long partnerships with other women.
A secret beyond the stars
In 1983, Sally Ride made history when she became the first American woman in space. But there was a side to her that didn’t become so well-known. She had been in a relationship with another woman, named Tam O’Shaughnessy, for 27 years. O’Shaughnessy was an old friend, and the pair had met through tennis when they were teenagers.
Ride had married astronaut Steven Hawley in 1982, but the pair divorced five years later. She and O’Shaughnessy eventually lived together in California and wrote children’s science books. They also founded Sally Ride Science. It was only when Ride died in 2012 that her relationship with O’Shaughnessy became public.
A new life in Paris
Paris was already quite an exciting place for novelist and poet Gertrude Stein. Then, in September 1907, Alice B. Toklas arrived and made the place a whole lot more interesting. Toklas moved into Stein’s apartment a few years later.
The pair lived together for almost four decades, and their home attracted many famous visitors like Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway. Stein sometimes referred to Toklas as her ‘wifey,’ despite same-sex marriage being something in the far future. They stayed together until Stein died in 1946.
The woman behind the novels
Novelist Willa Cather was never really interested in finding herself a husband. No, she made a home with magazine editor Edith Lewis instead, after the pair met in Nebraska. They settled in New York and lived together for nearly 40 years.
Lewis helped Cather with her writing career by assisting with manuscripts and publishing. However, Cather chose to keep a lot of her personal life private, so there’s a lot we don’t know about her. What we do know is Lewis was there until Cather died in 1947. The two women were later buried together.
A home away from Hull-House
It was definitely difficult for Jane Addams to run Chicago’s Hull-House. She founded the settlement in 1889 and kept at it, though, while also finding time for a personal relationship with Mary Rozet Smith. They soon became close companions.
The couple spent time at a vacation home in Bar Harbor, Maine, and sent very affectionate letters to each other. Addams never married a man. Smith remained an important part of her private life for several decades. In 1934, Smith died, and Addams passed away the following year.
Hollywood’s private partnership
Dorothy Arzner did many incredible things during her life. One of her most famous achievements was that she became the first woman to direct a sound film. But there was one thing she kept a secret from the public — her partner, Marion Morgan.
She spent nearly fifty years in a relationship with choreographer Marion Morgan. They even worked together on one of Arzner’s films. Arzner helped Morgan, who was also a dancer, by hiring her as a choreographer for her 1940 film Dance, Girl, Dance. The two women shared a home in California and lived together until Morgan died in 1971.
A different kind of doubles partnership
Billie Jean King became one of the biggest names in tennis and was married to Larry King for more than 20 years. But then, she realized something had changed. She had fallen for someone else — another tennis player named Ilana Kloss.
They kept their romance very private for years, and that wasn’t exactly easy for King. She was the first prominent female athlete to come out as gay. She and Kloss have been together for more than 40 years, and Kloss is now King’s business partner.
An engagement that lasted decades
A diamond pin is a rather unusual engagement gift, but Edith Windsor got one from Thea Spyer in 1967. The pair then spent many years together, even though same-sex marriage was still illegal. Still, they never gave up on each other.
The pair lived together in New York before eventually traveling to Toronto to get married. That was in 2007, and it was a huge moment for the couple. Their marriage was later recognized in the United States after Windsor fought a legal battle. She died in 2017, and her legacy lives on.
Two weddings, one partner
Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were originally colleagues who met while working at a magazine. But their relationship quickly turned into something much more. The pair eventually moved in together and stayed together for 55 years.
The pair established the lesbian organization Daughters of Bilitis in 1955. They also fought for LGBTQ+ rights for many years. In 2008, Martin and Lyon were married in San Francisco, just a few months before Lyon died.
The other Katharine
Practically every American knows the song ‘America the Beautiful,’ but there was a woman behind the song who also had a secret romance. Katharine Lee Bates was a poet and professor at Wellesley College. She fell in love with another woman, and the two lived together for 25 years.
Katharine Coman, Bates’s partner, was a professor at Wellesley College, and they spent most of their time together. The two women supported each other’s careers and shared many interests, including ones collected in Yellow Clover.
A poet’s second chapter
In 1953, Adrienne Rich married Harvard economist Alfred Haskell Conrad. The two had three sons together, but their marriage eventually ended. In 1976, Rich began a new chapter in her life.
A few years later, Rich began living with another writer named Michelle Cliff. The two women became partners and were together for 35 years. They worked on many projects together, including the journal Sinister Wisdom. They remained together until Rich died in 2012.
An unexpected stop in Brazil
American poet Elizabeth Bishop only meant to visit Brazil for a vacation, but she ended up staying for over a decade. She was originally supposed to stay for a few weeks, but she fell in love with a Brazilian architect named Lota de Macedo Soares.
Bishop moved in with Soares, and they shared a home in the mountains. The pair lived together for nearly 15 years, and Bishop’s poetry was influenced by her time in Brazil. She returned to the United States in the late 1960s.
Leaving a husband for Paris
It seems like nothing was going to stop Janet Flanner from starting her career as a writer. She was married to a man named William Lane Rehm, but the marriage didn’t last. In 1921, she left him and moved to Paris, where she met Solita Solano.
The couple traveled around Europe before settling in Paris. There, Flanner began writing for The New Yorker in 1925. She and Solano were together for nearly 50 years, and Flanner died in 1978.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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