Don Lemon and longtime partner Tim Malone are officially married.
The former CNN anchor, 58, and his fiancé, 38, wed on Saturday, April 6, in New York City.
“I’m a last-minute person and most things I just don’t worry about,” Lemon told People days before the ceremony. “But this one I’m secretly worried about, but I’m letting Tim take the reins because he’s a good planner.”
The ceremony was held at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in midtown Manhattan and officiated by Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the United Nations.
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“She’s a friend, and it means that much to us,” Lemon said of Thomas-Greenfield. In attendance at the wedding were about 140 guests.
The ceremony also incorporated marriage traditions from both Lemon and Malone’s cultures. Malone’s two sisters led the guests in a “big Irish blessing.” At the end of the ceremony, the newlyweds jumped over a broom, paying respect to the symbolic way enslaved people in the American South recognized their marriages.
The couple hired out the entire bottom floor of Ralph Lauren’s Polo Bar (where they had their first date) in Manhattan for the weekend, a source confirmed to Us ahead of the wedding. The source also shared that among the celebrity guests expected to attend include Clive Davis, Joy Behar, Matt Laur, Sex and the City creator Darren Star, Tamron Hall as well as Alec and Hilaria Baldwin, among others.
Leading up to their nuptials, the couple has been sharing their pre-wedding festivities via Instagram. Lemon and Malone even received a pre-wedding call from Vice President Kamala Harris, which was captured in a video and posted via Instagram Story.
Lemon also shared a photo via Instagram Story of three little tuxedos and harnesses for the couple’s three dogs. “We know 3 guests ready to get this party started,” Lemon captioned the photo.
Additionally, April 6 also happens to be Malone’s 40th birthday; Malone thanked his followers for “all the love” and well wishes via Instagram on Saturday.
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40th birthday aside, Malone told People that it was important for him and Lemon to have a large, traditional wedding.
“We wanted to make a public statement and we wanted to involve our loved ones,” Malone explained. “We obviously could have easily gone to city hall. We could have used Covid as a perfect excuse to do something really quiet. But I think this is also a message. For I don’t know what percent of our guests, on both sides, but for a lot of them it’s going to be their first gay wedding.”
The couple began dating in 2016, almost a year after they first met in Bridgehampton, New York, at Almond Restaurant. Lemon announced their engagement in 2019. “He gave me a present on his birthday. How could I say no?” he wrote via Instagram alongside a photo of a “Daddy Will You Marry Papa” dog collar.
“It’s weird to say ‘fiancé,’ but my fiancé is a really great guy. He’s really sweet,” the Don Lemon Show host shared in an exclusive interview with Us Weekly in April 2019. “He was so vulnerable when he was asking me [to marry him]. I didn’t think it was real.” (Malone is a real estate agent at Douglas Elliman.)
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“His entire body was shaking, and he said, ‘I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.’ And I said, ‘Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh, are you serious? This is real!’ And I saw the box and I said, ‘All right,’” Lemon told Us. “It’s been an amazing experience.”
Lemon came out as gay in his 2011 memoir Transparent. The journalist also admitted to Us that, after getting engaged, the relationship between him and Malone felt different. “It feels real. Not that it didn’t feel real before,” he said in 2019. “I grew up thinking that … my relationships would never be public, let alone get married, and now I can get legally married. My relationship is public and I have started thinking about children. So I’m a real late bloomer! A true late bloomer.”
