Terry Cosentino and Tom Rock try not to make a habit of cutting others in line. But when they do see fit to leapfrog ahead of people, it’s with a clean conscience.
When they pushed past competitors as contestants on the shows “Ellen’s Game of Games” (2020) and “The Amazing Race” (2006), for example, they were just doing their reality TV duty.
Their wedding date is more representative of their grace and fortitude when situational stakes are high. Though they could have wed as early as 2011, when New York legalized same-sex marriages, Mr. Cosentino and Dr. Rock, then together for seven years, chose to hold off until after the Supreme Court’s June 2015 decision requiring all states to recognize these unions.
“We didn’t want to cheat the system,” said Mr. Cosentino, the senior corporate events manager at Constant Contact, a marketing company. He and Dr. Rock, who holds a doctorate in education from Columbia’s Teachers College and is the chief student affairs officer and associate vice president there, married Nov. 12, 2016. Dr. Ruth Westheimer, then a colleague of Dr. Rock’s, was among the 230 guests.
“We wanted it to be all right for every couple, not just some,” Mr. Cosentino said.
As supporters around the country marked the 10th anniversary of the landmark legal ruling during Pride Month, Mr. Cosentino, 64, and Dr. Rock, 58, who live in Manhattan, planned to acknowledge it in their usual way.
“Every year we host a small brunch in our West Village apartment just before the annual Pride March,” Dr. Rock said. They are well positioned to salute the making of history: Their building overlooks the Stonewall National Monument and the Stonewall Inn.
Mr. Cosentino and Dr. Rock met in 2004 at an L.G.B.T.Q. speed dating event in Manhattan. They quickly became devoted to each other, quirks and all.
Mr. Cosentino’s preference for a monochromatic, clutter-free living environment took a blow in 2010 when Dr. Rock, who owns things that are not white, moved in.
Additionally, restaurants have been a challenge from the get-go. “Tom has gotten better about allowing me to order in front of people,” said Mr. Cosentino, who has an aversion to any food made with cooked onion or garlic, and whose skin crawls when presented with any dish garnished in green — preferences he usually relays to the server. (Now, “when Terry orders, I find myself taking over the conversation at the table,” as a distraction, Dr. Rock said.)
Evidence of his willingness to compromise was especially pronounced during Covid, when Mr. Cosentino, who considers himself a “germaphobe,” stopped spraying Lysol on every door handle Dr. Rock touched. He also scuttled his initial insistence that Dr. Rock, an avid runner, wear rubber gloves and a face mask on sprints around the building’s rooftop.
Mr. Cosentino’s bulked-up flexibility may have been most on display in September 2020, when he agreed to fly to Los Angeles to appear on “Ellen’s Game of Games” with Dr. Rock. The two had appeared on “The Amazing Race” more than a dozen years earlier and were eliminated halfway through the competition. Their luck was not much better on the “Game of Games” set, where Mr. Cosentino was pelted by paint guns after failing to guess the celebrity Dr. Rock had been assigned: Reese Witherspoon. Neither could believe it: That summer, before they started subscribing to streaming services, they had been watching “Legally Blonde” on repeat.
Marriage may not be the secret sauce to what both say is their complete compatibility. “Tom and Terry are practically the same person,” said Jennifer Rock, Dr. Rock’s sister-in-law, nine years ago at their wedding in Rye, N.Y. “And they’re always aligned in what makes them happy.”
Through the years, they’ve noted adjustments to where they find joy.
Before they were married, it was just Mr. Cosentino who laced up Rollerblade skates and zipped himself into a clown suit every November to kick off the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade with other clowns, something he’s done since the early 2000s. Now Dr. Rock is part of the parade crew, too. Last year, Dr. Rock even captained the float of the pasta sauce company Rao’s Homemade, which featured a knight with a cheese-grater shield on a horse made of noodles.
A morning routine that starts with Mr. Cosentino’s bright “Good morning, sunshine!” now incorporates an inquiry into Dr. Rock’s Wordle score. (“Four,” Dr. Rock says, on repeat.) And before they were married, they picked up the phone to sing their special duet of “Happy Birthday” to a handful of relatives. Now, in any given year, they’re singing it 55 times.
“There’s one week in April when we’re literally singing it every other day,” Mr. Cosentino said.
They never get bored of it, or each other. “Life with us is really an adventure,” Dr. Rock said. “We laugh and we have fun and we always look forward to the next thing.”
Maybe not always.
Dr. Rock has lately been considering buying Mr. Cosentino business cards printed with his dietary preferences so restaurants feel less like minefields.
“Something he could actually hand to the waiter without having to verbalize it,” he said. He regrets not coming up with the idea before their first anniversary, traditionally a time for paper gifts.
Recent concerns about an unraveling of marriage rights also make them wary. “You see protests popping up,” Mr. Cosentino said. “We do worry, because you’re trusting the system. It’s an uneasy wait and see.”
Not as uneasy for them as for many others, perhaps, because they’re in it together. “There’s no one I’d rather do this life with than Terry,” Dr. Rock said. “We always knew we were soul mates.”
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