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Harold Booth, right, and Dan Kelley, at their home in Hallowell, had a “marriage” ceremony in Ohio in 1985.

HALLOWELL — Harold Booth and Daniel Kelley exchanged vows 24 years ago today in a ceremony performed by a minister at a Unitarian Universalist church in Ohio.

Their now-faded purple program lists the hymns and the readings, and their "marriage" certificate is signed by the minister.

On that Columbus Day weekend, the men packed two cars with all of Kelley's belongings and moved to Maine to spend the rest of their lives together.

Today, as they mark their anniversary with a quiet supper at home – or perhaps splurge on dinner in a restaurant – the self-described "stay-at-home fuddy-duddies" will also think about the possibility that after Nov. 3 they may be able to legally marry. "We've got everything except legal recognition," Booth said.

Booth, 60, and Kelley, 57, met at a gay men's conference at a beach near Saco in the summer of 1985. Booth knew right away that he wanted to attract Kelley's attention.

"I contrived to be in places where he was," Booth said. "I suppose I made a bit of a pest of myself."

Kelley responded: "I kept tripping over him."

By the end of the one-week program, the men knew their relationship would be "a going proposition," as Booth put it.

After visits back and forth between Ohio and Maine – and a chance for Kelley to meet Booth's children from a previous marriage – the men held a "service of union."

Today, from their home on Winthrop Street, the men welcome new neighbors to the area.

"New neighbors come in, I introduce myself," Booth said. "I'm Harold and this is my husband, Dan."

For Booth, the journey that led him to Kelley began with doubts about his feelings as a teenager, a marriage that produced two children and a fight to accept himself as a gay man.

Booth points to the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City as the turning point in the gay movement, although it wasn't until years later that he came to terms with his sexuality. At the Stonewall Inn, gay customers of the club stood up to police who were trying to enforce laws that prohibited homosexuality in public.

"Prior to that, you could certainly be homosexual, but the concept of self-acceptance and openness that for me is expressed in the word gay, rather than homosexual, was not really present because there was so much fear and hiding and being closed in, closed down, closed up," he said.

As a teenager, Booth said he realized he was attracted to other boys. But he just couldn't accept it.

"I managed to play a number of mind games on myself," he said. "It's a phase. It's because I don't consider myself attractive, and I can't attract a woman. It's crazy, but that was there."

Booth was born in South Africa to missionary parents who moved back to the U.S. when he was a teenager. It was a culture shock, Booth was shy, and he had a hard time meeting girls.

It was the mid-1960s and boys were expected to approach girls at the high school dances.

In college, he had a girlfriend. He married a girl he had spent time with as a child in South Africa.

"I figured 'I'll get married, it will go away, we'll live happily ever after,'" he said.

After 18 months of marriage, Booth told his wife he was gay. They worked on the relationship for 11 years, but the marriage ended in divorce. "I felt incomplete," he said.

Then he met Kelley, and everything changed.

Booth, a retired state worker, and Kelley, who works for the city of Hallowell, share a quiet life filled with house maintenance projects and occasional trips to Portland for organ concerts.

For them, marriage would mean societal acceptance and legal protections.

Despite their efforts to draw up wills and register with the state as domestic partners, Booth said some of those legal protections fall short. The men have powers of attorney, but those legal rights end when someone dies.

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