Bob Wallace and his fiancé JoJo Wallace have been together for three years now. Photos around their living room capture a couple in love, including shots from a birthday party and a ski trip to Colorado.
The pair even has a very special painting from a vacation this past summer.
“It’s a shutter from the 9th Ward in New Orleans,” Bob said. “And we met the artist and he said well let me put you in the window and he did.”
The two men are silhouettes in the painting, and in their everyday life, they are so in sync they finish each other’s sentences. In fact, they did just that when telling Bay News 9 about their engagement in October.
“I said JoJo you know, we need to get married,” Bob said. “And he just looked at me and said OK!”
That’s when JoJo decided to go ahead and change his last name to Wallace. The two even set a wedding date for April in California.
But Thursday’s decision by a judge, who ordered clerks across Florida to issue marriage licenses to same sex-couples or face possible lawsuits, changed everything. Now, the Wallaces say they can get married in Pinellas County.
“Hearing it last night, it just really hit home for me that it was going to be a possibility and it was going to happen,” JoJo said.
Following that order, the Florida Court Clerks & Comptrollers Executive Director Kenneth A. Kent released a statement.
“Given this development, we are strongly encouraging all Clerks to follow this clarification order and to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-gender couples on January 6, 2015,” Kent said.
Bob and Jojo say they’ll be heading straight to the clerk’s office come Tuesday morning to get their marriage license. Afterwards, they say they’d like to get married at City Hall in St. Petersburg.
Plans are still being finalized but Bob said he’s already asked some of his loved ones to be there.
“That excitement, knowing that our family would support us is really important,” Bob said. “Because this has been a long challenge.”
One the Wallaces will now overcome together.