90yo ex-U.S. senator to marry 20 years after death of wife… and his spouse is a man

A 90-year-old former U.S senator whose wife died 20 years ago is to marry again – and he’s marrying a man. Harris Wofford has revealed he is to wed “best friend” Matthew Charlton, a man 50 years his junior. In an opinion piece in the New York Times, the Democrat former senator for Pennsylvania, said his was “a story of two great loves” - with his wife Clare, who died of leukaemia in 1996, and Mr Charlton. He wrote: “I had a half-century of marriage with a wonderful woman, and now am lucky for a second time to have found happiness.”

Too often, our society seeks to label people by pinning them on the wall — straight, gay or in between. I don’t categorize myself based on the gender of those I love.

Harris Wofford

Wofford reflected on his life with his wife of 48 years — they had three children — and how he unexpectedly fell in love with Charlton five years after her death in 1996. He said “same sex-marriage equality” seemed impossible at one time in America. "I was wrong, and should not have been so pessimistic,“ he said. The former adviser to President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. said he and Charlton plan to marry on April 30.

It is right to expand our conception of marriage to include all Americans who love each other.

Harris Wofford

Harris Wofford