The Marty Theater was filled with roughly 70 people as Brett Lemick (’08) and his husband Ray Monaghan told their story of love and turbulent process of receiving a visa.
“Ray and I met through YouTube actually,” Lemick said.
Lemick was working as an intern for the Jerry Springer Show and made videos detailing his experiences, when one day Monaghan left him an “insightful and witty” comment. The two started a long-range relationship, with Lemick in America and Monaghan in Ireland.
“His YouTube name was IamRaynbow,” Lemick said. “Then comments turned into messaging, messaging into Skyping and then we fell in love.”
Unlike Lemick, who had never been with another man, Monaghan flirted with men before, but waited until he was in a relationship to come out to his mother.
“[Being gay without dating] is like liking carrot cake without eating carrot cake,” Lemick said. “You don’t know if you really do like it, but you go to Wal-Mart and think about carrot cake and go home and watch carrot cake on the internet.”
After several months of Skype sleepovers, Lemick told Monaghan that he was going to be on NBC’s “Escape Routes.” That meant very limited contact for six weeks.
“It really put us to the test,” Lemick said.
According to Lemick, while filming, people were tweeting him that someone hacked his YouTube account.
“I got so scared because that was my side business,” he said.
It turned out that Monaghan hacked his account and left a tear filled video professing his love and wishing him a happy birthday.
“That’s when we knew that we couldn’t be apart anymore,” Monaghan said. “I quit my job and went to apply for a visa.”
According to Lemick, Monaghan’s enthusiasm and confidence came across as suspicious to the American embassy in Ireland.
Monaghan applied for three different visas before finally being approved. He was denied a tourist and student visa, before the two decided to tie the knot and apply for a fiancé visa.
“We proposed to each other on June 26 [2013],” Monaghan said. “That is the same day the section three of Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was overturned.”
But the troubles didn’t stop there.
“Those [relationship questions] you see in movies are real,” Lemick said. “They asked us who slept on what side and we had to prove our love was real.”
It’s been a long road, but the two will celebrate Monaghan’s one-year anniversary in America.
After opening up about all the disappointments and the journey Lemick and Monaghan really just wanted the audience to take away one thing.
“Long story short, we need to stop being polite about who we are,” Lemick said.
