Queer Joy Interview #5: D. Karen Wilkerson
I spoke to Karen (She/Her) on 6/27/24 in Tyler, TX about East Texas in the 60s and she and her wife Jolie being the first gay couple married in Smith County.
“[Queer joy is] being happy in my own skin… there are lots of pictures of me smiling, of me being out in the community doing what I do… the best one, my favorite picture of me, is a picture of me with my wife on our wedding day.
We were engaged for, I think, a year and a half before the decision came in 2015…and sure enough, when the decision came down, we zoomed down to the courthouse.
We asked for a license that morning, and we were denied… so I turned to my lawyer, and I said, ‘File the suit. Get it filed today.’ and he and another attorney, worked together on the suit, filed it in federal district court that afternoon, and by Monday of next week, amazingly, Smith County had decided to alter the forms and give us a license.
And we called the minister and said ‘[the wedding] is on for tonight,’ called a restaurant and said we'll have a party of X number of people here tonight for our wedding dinner afterwards, called the limo company to come pick us up and take us there, went by the florist and picked out flowers for us and for the house, went and got the form signed by the judge, talked through all the other plans while we were driving back and forth from that county to home, called the kids, changed up the the layout of the house, so there were places for people to sit, and had champagne there, and then left and went to have dinner. I mean, we just absolutely threw it together.
We didn't have time to be nervous or have cold feet. It was just ‘Okay, What time is it? Who's coming next? What happens now?’ And it was exciting, it was absolutely exciting, and we never have had a formal reception or engraved invitations, nothing. But I mean, we had the kids there and our closest friends, and away we went. I don't regret a minute of it, not a minute.
—
One of the reasons that I stayed in Tyler… is that if I’m driving around in a car that has a rainbow sticker on it, or I'm wearing a shirt in a store, and some kid sees me and sees me as just going about my daily business and being satisfied with my life and happy, then that may give them a spark to know that it's okay for them to be happy too… they can be who they are here if they choose to.”
-D. Karen Wilkerson (she/her)
