The 26 Year Age Difference Between This Black Gay Couple Created An ‘Opening Of Peace’
Author Doug Cooper Spencer, 67, almost let the opportunity to fall in love again pass him by. In 1998, sitting in Fountain Square, a busy plaza in downtown Cincinnati, as he continued to work on his first novel, he noticed someone walking by.
“I saw these nice legs walk past, and I glanced at them, like, ‘Oh, he’s got nice legs.’ That's it—because I'm an introvert,” he said.
Doug had dissolved a relationship a year and a half prior and wanted to focus on writing. While glancing up from the legs that caused his temporary distraction, he caught the eye of the person to whom those legs were attached.
“He catches me [looking up] and he stops and I'm like, oh God, here we go. No, I do not want to be bothered,” Doug recalls thinking to himself. “Of course, I immediately saw that he was young. He was my daughter's age. And I'm like, I do not want to be bothered with anyone, and a kid at that. What am I going to say to him?”
“When I saw an opportunity in him, and he was sitting alone and he was quiet, and then I saw the contact, it was immediately like, oh, there's an opening of peace.”
- Greg Cooper Spencer
Greg Cooper Spencer, 41, observed the peacefulness of the man sitting there. He extended his hand out to Doug, and after a short, but illuminating, discussion, Doug offered Greg a ride to his job to continue their conversation. They talked every day from that moment forward.
Greg, who was trying to figure out his future while navigating college and coming out as gay, felt a connection to Doug that he didn’t want to let slip away.
“I was emotionally all over the place. So being gay was just another thing that I didn't quite know how to place or deal with,” Greg says. “So when I saw an opportunity in him, and he was sitting alone and he was quiet, and then I saw the contact, it was immediately like, oh, there's an opening of peace.”
While the two did begin dating fairly soon after meeting, Doug was working through some reservations about dating someone so much younger than him.
“I was used to being with guys my age or if they were younger [they were] maybe 10 years younger at the most, you know? Usually, they were like my age or older,” Doug said.
Because of this, the couple began having regular conversations about age to ensure they were aligned.
Mama Said
Doug’s daughter, who’s one year older than Greg, imparted important advice to her father on how he should navigate the age difference in his budding relationship with Greg.
“She was like, ‘Daddy, you need to stop being a parent to him. You're not his parent, and you have to stop doing that to him.’”
Doug’s mother, an Oprah fan, also had some insight to share.
“My mother said, well, ‘Oprah says age shouldn't matter. And so I just think that you need to make sure you find common ground with him, and that's what matters most.’”
Doug’s mother also prepared him for the inevitable challenge of needing to support Greg as he matured.
After Greg turned 21, he began frequenting the bar and party scene. This period in Greg’s life led to the couple’s biggest challenge.
“I'm watching him cross a few lines. That was not good for him or us, you know? And seeing some of the people around him who were toxic, he could not see that,” Doug said. “I just had to quietly set up parameters and one of the parameters was [knowing] when do I let him know that you've crossed too many lines, so now it's time for us to reconsider our relationship? But it never got to that point.”
Tying The Knot
Doug and Greg have been together for almost 24 years and were married within three months of moving to New York in 2014, one of a few states where marriage equality was legal before the Supreme Court legalized marriage for gay and lesbian couples nationwide in 2015.
Marriage wasn’t something that had occurred to Greg due to the financial commitment associated with the ceremony. For him, it wasn’t a big deal. There were other things about the relationship that solidified the union for him.
“What I did learn over time is that I enjoyed building things with him and those things felt more like a marriage than a certificate,” he said. “The first home that we bought together back in Cincinnati, that felt like it sealed something to me. That felt like more of a celebration than having a wedding and inviting people over and buying stuff. I saw that as our own commitment to each other.”
“Know that the person who you're going to take on the future with is someone you can trust. You have to make sure that the person you're interested in is a caring person. I mean, just overall, just a caring soul.”
- Doug Cooper Spencer
Doug saw marriage as a way to protect all that they’d built together.
“We had done so much together, invested so much, and I was like, I just want to give him that commitment,” he said. “The main thing was legal protection. That was the main thing. We have a home. I cannot afford someone coming after I'm gone and telling him, ‘yeah, you have no legal rights to do that.’ I’ve seen it before. And so I want to protect him.”
In 1999, Doug wrote a letter to Greg as a way to support him through his coming out journey. That letter was turned into a book called A Letter To A Friend: Thoughts on Living as a Gay Man. In the letter, Doug writes: “People define love in so many ways; some are on the mark, while others, I think, miss it completely. The best definition of love I’ve ever read is by M. Scott Peck. He defines love as ‘the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.’”
Watching the Cooper Spencer’s together is like watching Peck’s words in action.
So how do Greg and Doug keep their marriage on track?
“Know that the person who you're going to take on the future with is someone you can trust,” Doug says. “You have to make sure that the person you're interested in is a caring person. I mean, just overall, just a caring soul.”
Greg shares the importance of being adaptable and being an individual.
“We're not the same people that we were 24 years ago, and we shouldn't be. It's important to encourage growth and to be open to what that means,” he said. “We're not walking around linked. We're not the same [person]. We've grown together over time, and it's a beautiful thing to look back at where we were and see where we are now, and then have a vision of what we see for the future, which is just continuing this forward and sharing our love with other people.”
Johnnie Ray Kornegay III (aka Jay Ray) serves as Deputy Director of Strategy and Impact for The Counter Narrative Project (CNP), an organization committed to countering narratives and speaking truth to power. In addition, he is co-host and producer of the podcast Queue Points, a visual podcast where he and his co-host, DJ Sir Daniel, inform and celebrate Black Music creatives through meaningful dialogue.
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