Wedding bells! Lena Waithe revealed that she secretly married her fiancée, Alana Mayo.
“We snuck and did it,” the Master of None alum, 35, told The Ellen DeGeneres Show guest host John Legend on Friday, November 15, while holding up her left hand to show off her wedding ring. “You know, we didn’t make any announcements.”
Waithe said that she and Mayo, 34, wed at a courthouse in San Fransisco “right in front of” a statue of late gay rights activist Harvey Milk.
“It was her idea, like all good things are,” the actress said of the production executive. “She was just driving and she saw the courthouse and she said, ‘We should get married there.’ And I said, ‘Cool, I’m down.’”
Waithe explained that she and Mayo agreed on the location because of the storied history behind it.
“It really was a humbling day to marry someone so amazing but also to really appreciate all the work that so many people have put in for us to be able to do that,” she said. “Everybody should be able to do that.”
The Emmy winner proposed to the Outlier Society head of production and development on Thanksgiving Day in 2017 during a trip to Tokyo.
“The funny thing is, it was actually super chill ‘cause even though I am very over-the-top, my lovely lady is the opposite, which is good because I’m very much in front of the scenes and she’s very much behind them,” Waithe said on the “Homophilia” podcast that December. “It was just, like, in the morning, in the bed, no strings, but, you know, it was super low-key.”
The Ready Player One star previously opened up about her now-wife’s sexual orientation in 2016, nearly two years after they were first linked as a couple.
“People will ask my girlfriend, ‘Alana, are you gay? Are you straight?’ For a second, she was trying to figure out, ‘Am I a lesbian?’ I was like, ‘No, I don’t think you should call yourself that, because a lesbian means you were born gay. I’m a lesbian.’ Then, she was like, ‘Am I bisexual?’ And I’m like, ‘Maybe?’” Waithe told Refinery29 at the time. “She was like, ‘You know what? I’m not going to label it. I’m just going to be myself.’ I think it’s interesting that we can say, ‘Look, sexuality is fluid and love is where you find it.’ I love that our love story exists, because there are a lot of love stories like ours. Other people can see that it doesn’t matter how you were born or how you perceive yourself. It’s about being open-minded and listening to your heart.”
