Anthony Ashdown Proposed on Date One After Jake Quoted Golden Girls
Sydney man Anthony Ashdown says he knew within hours that Jake was the one, after Jake quoted The Golden Girls in a homewares store on their first date in 2015. They married a decade later in Leura, Ashdown in a ball gown Jake made.
Anthony Ashdown, a Sydney man, says he knew the moment Jake quoted his favourite TV show, The Golden Girls, on their first date in 2015 that this was the person he would marry. He told Jake so on the spot.
The pair matched on Grindr, a dating app, and planned coffee followed by an afternoon at Cronulla beach. Ashdown, then 33, was nervous. Jake was 10 years younger, and it was Ashdown's first real date since a breakup the year before.
A first date with the cards on the table
They met in a coffee shop at Miranda Fair on a hot summer morning. Ashdown said he laid out everything early. He was about to become a surrogate father with a lesbian couple, intended to be part of the child's life, and would not accept a partner who objected.
Jake was not fazed in the slightest, Ashdown said. They traded lines from The Simpsons, Friends, Star Wars and Seinfeld. Meeting another gay man into nerd culture, Ashdown said, "felt revolutionary" in his world in 2015.
The line that did it
Before the beach, Jake asked Ashdown to help him spend gift vouchers that were about to expire. In a homewares store, where Ashdown wanted a new beach towel, Jake began a story. He smirked and said: "OK, picture it, Sicily, 1922 …"
That is the catchphrase of Sophia "Ma" Petrillo in The Golden Girls. Ashdown used to watch the show curled up on the couch with his late grandmother. He still remembers her laugh, a chuckle that hissed through her teeth.
He did a double take. Then, without thinking, he blurted out: "Oh my God did you just quote Golden Girls at me? Marry me!"
Jake chuckled and carried on with his story. Ashdown said the remark sounded brash for a first date but held some truth. He thought to himself, "I'm gonna marry that boy one day."
The wedding, a decade later
Ten years later, they did marry, on an April day in Leura that followed a week of torrential rain. Both wore tuxedos, but Ashdown wanted something special for the bottom half: a ball gown.
Jake had just finished a fashion course and made it by hand. Ashdown walked down the aisle in it and said he felt, for the first time in his life, "like a true expression of who I was."
Ashdown said Jake is a wonderful stepdad to his two daughters, and that the couple never fight. In recent years Ashdown was diagnosed with autism and ADHD, which he said made a lot about himself make perfect sense.
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