Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer - Nominee

“Don’t postpone joy. Keep it hot!” 

- Edith Windsor

“Edie Windsor, will you marry me?” 

- Thea Spyer

Philadelphia-born IBM Technology Manager Edith Windsor and Amsterdam-born clinical psychologist Dr. Thea Spyer were a longtime lesbian couple who met each other at the Greenwich Village, New York City restaurant Portofino in 1963. At the time, they were in romantic relationships with other women but that all changed in 1965 when they started dating each other. Since it was still illegal to be queer/trans in America at the time, they had to hide their relationship from the wider world, including Windsor’s co-workers. In 1967, Spyer proposed to Windsor with a circular diamond pin, not a more visible ring that would tip people off to their lesbian identities. Six months later, they moved into a Greenwich Village apartment and shortly afterward bought a vacation home on Long Island where they spent their next 40 summers together. While Spyer continued her psychology practice, with many of her patients coming from the LGBTQ+ community, Windsor worked for IBM and assisted the Atomic Energy Commission. In 1975, Windsor left IBM and created her own consulting firm called PC Classics that specialized in software development projects. At the same time, Windsor taught many LGBTQ+ groups to become tech literate and computerize their mail systems. They also began to get involved with New York City’s LGBTQ+ community after the Stonewall Uprising with Windsor noting years later that those activists changed her and Spyer’s life. The couple’s world changed dramatically when Spyer was diagnosed with progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) in 1977. Windsor devoted most of her time to taking care of Spyer as the MS ravaged her body. On the first day that domestic partnerships became available in 1993 in New York City, the couple registered and were given the 80th certificate. In 2002, Spyer suffered from a heart attack and was diagnosed with aortic stenosis. Five years later the couple was told Spyer had a year to live so they traveled to Toronto, Canada to get legally married on May 22, 2007, since it wasn’t legal to get married in New York state at that time. That marriage was later declared valid by the state of New York. After Spyer died in 2009 at the age of 77 due to complications from her heart condition, Windsor became the executor and sole beneficiary of her estate through a revocable trust. Since their marriage was not recognized on a federal level due to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) law, Windsor was charged by the IRS $363,053 in federal estate taxes on her inheritance. This did not happen to opposite-sex couples. Windsor’s lawyer, the renowned lesbian litigator Roberta Kaplan, filed a lawsuit in the SDNY in 2010 to get a refund under the argument that Section 3 of DOMA singled out same-sex couples and was unconstitutional. She won that case at the district and then appellate level. On June 16, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed both lower courts rulings and declared that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional because it violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Windsor got her refund, and this case was one of the catalysts that led to the legalization of same-sex marriages nationwide on June 26, 2015, in the Obergefell v. Hodges U.S. Supreme Court case. Windsor went on to marry Judith Kasen-Windsor in 2016 and a year later she died at the age of 88. Windsor was honored with numerous awards during her lifetime and the couple was the subject of a 2009 documentary, Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement.