13 Major League Athletes Who Came Out After Retiring

According to a 2018 article in The New York Times, Jeff Rohrer is the first known professional football player to marry a person of the same sex. Rohrer married his partner, Joshua Ross, in 2018 and together they live under the same roof with Rohrer's ex-wife and their two teenagers, per People. It's a happy

According to a 2018 article in The New York Times, Jeff Rohrer is the first known professional football player to marry a person of the same sex. Rohrer married his partner, Joshua Ross, in 2018 and together they live under the same roof with Rohrer's ex-wife and their two teenagers, per People. It's a happy ending for an athlete who spent much of his life hiding, even from himself. Per Outsports, Rohrer had no gay experiences until his marriage ended, but had known for a long time that he liked men. "So many nights I cried myself to sleep, feeling like I was the Wolfman, or Jekyll and Hyde, or Frankenstein, some kind of monster that only comes out when it's a full moon, always living in the shadows," he said.

The 2018 Outsports article is when Rohrer first publicly discussed both his sexuality and his impending nuptials, but it came after a few years of privately figuring out his identity, with the help of Ross. This was, of course, long after his time in the NFL had ended. According to The Associated Press, Rohrer was an active player from 1982 to 1989, spending his entire NFL career with the Dallas Cowboys. Per Outsports, when Rohrer and Ross attended a Cowboys reunion event in 2022, he was met with nothing but positivity. "I was super scared headed to Dallas and how it would go down, but everyone was amazing and great. Everyone was totally accepting," he said.

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