When Brock Michael Stanley McGillis came out publicly as gay in November 2016, he was almost certainly the first professional hockey player to do so.
If this story line has a twinge of familiarity given the massive success of the HBO Max series “Heated Rivalry,” about closeted hockey players in a hypermasculine environment, you can imagine how Mr. McGillis felt watching the show.
“During the first two episodes, I probably slammed my laptop down like three times,” Mr. McGillis said.
The buzz around the Canadian series just so happened to concur with a milestone in Mr. McGillis’s love life: his Jan. 30 wedding to Matthew Thomas Ward.
Though Mr. Ward, 29, was never a professional hockey player himself — he is a sales associate at Cartier in Toronto — Mr. McGillis, 42, said he personally struggled as a closeted gay man throughout his nine-year career that included time in the Ontario Hockey League and United Hockey League.
“A lot of that was my life,” Mr. McGillis said of the show. “You go through all this trauma living it, and then you think you’ve worked through it all, and then it ends up on a screen.”
The couple’s story began 10 years ago, in January 2016, when they connected on the dating app Grindr. They added each other on Facebook but didn’t talk for months. One day, in May 2016, Mr. Ward, who lived in Toronto, messaged Mr. McGillis, who lived in Sudbury, Ontario, and asked if he would be coming to town anytime soon.
Mr. McGillis, who had retired from hockey in 2010, was running multiple businesses, coaching and training hockey players in Sudbury, a hockey-centric town about a four-hour drive north of Toronto. Almost every weekend, he went down to Toronto, where most of his friends lived.
“There’s not much for a gay guy to do in Northern Ontario,” Mr. McGillis said. “It’s not gay mecca, let’s say that.”
That month, Mr. Ward met up with Mr. McGillis and his friends at a house party in Toronto, and they then went to a bar called Woody’s on Church. At about 2 a.m., most folks were calling it a night, but Mr. Ward and Mr. McGillis were not ready for the night to end. They went to the now-closed Thompson Diner, the go-to late-night spot, and talked until 8 a.m.
“I thought Matt was really cool, and I was just jaw-on-the-floor shocked and scared. I was not in an emotional place to be dating,” said Mr. McGillis, who had recently ended a four-year relationship.
Over the next several months, they spent their nights talking on the phone. Mr. McGillis realized he was falling in love on one of those early FaceTime calls when they both erupted in laughter, and noticed they had a similar laugh.
“It’s like one of those chuckles that’s deep in your belly, and we both kind of paused and stared at each other,” Mr. McGillis said. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s him.’”
They were always talking, but seldom made plans. “I wouldn’t allow myself to date him,” Mr. McGillis said.
But almost every weekend that Mr. McGillis visited Toronto, they would run into each other at events, restaurants and clubs.
“There was something that kept bringing us together,” Mr. McGillis said. “I wouldn’t show up with him, but I’d always leave with him.”
Mr. Ward said he was slightly bothered by Mr. McGillis’s restraint, but went with the flow. And Mr. McGillis was transparent about needing to take a beat and emotionally heal after his last relationship.
Binge more Vows columns here and read all our wedding, relationship and divorce coverage here.
On Nov. 3, 2016, Mr. McGillis decided to come out publicly in an interview with Yahoo. That day, he said he received more than 10,000 messages and emails from struggling athletes seeking advice; teens who were afraid of getting kicked out of their homes; and the news media. The global attention was overwhelming, he said.
Mr. Ward “was my main support and cheerleader and everything else,” Mr. McGillis said. “He believed in me, and I think I needed somebody at that point who believed in me.”
By early September 2017, Mr. McGillis told Mr. Ward that he wanted to be his boyfriend. The relationship lasted 24 hours.
“And then he said, ‘I don’t think I can do this,’” Mr. Ward said. “I was like ‘OK, no, I’m not being thrown around here.’”
“‘You’ll never hear from me again,’” Mr. Ward responded over text.
Two days later, in Toronto, Mr. McGillis spotted a man wearing eggshell blue pants with hummingbirds printed on them. “I’m like, ‘Oh wow, that guy looks hot,’” Mr. McGillis recalled.
It turned out that it was Mr. Ward — “like fate,” Mr. McGillis said.
“I remember being so sad that night,” Mr. Ward said, adding that his friends had advised him to stay home that night since he was not in a good head space. But he went out anyway — and locked eyes with his ex as he entered a car and drove past him.
“I rolled down the window and gave him the finger,” Mr. Ward said.
Mr. McGillis persisted anyway, texting, “Nice pants,” and begging Mr. Ward to meet. “When I saw him on the street, I was like, ‘What am I doing? I need to try and fix this,’” he said.
Mr. Ward decided to hear him out. At the very least, he figured he’d get some closure.
They met that evening, and Mr. McGillis immediately broke down and professed his love. “It was kind of what I needed to hear,” Mr. Ward said. They rekindled their romance and spent the rest of that Labor Day weekend together.
“We’d had this emotional wreckage, and we reconciled,” Mr. Ward said. “I felt at peace.”
In September 2019, the couple moved into an apartment in St. Lawrence, Toronto, where they continue to live. Mr. McGillis had phased out his businesses in Sudbury and transitioned to speaking full-time, including at high schools in Canada, where he talks about his life story and topics around L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy and mental health awareness.
Since he was on the road for half the year, the couple took advantage of Covid-19 lockdowns to spend more time together. Mr. Ward also frequently spearheaded conversations about marriage, which Mr. McGillis was vehemently opposed to.
“I didn’t think it was something that was ever in the cards for me,” Mr. McGillis said.
In 2024, he came around. “I knew that it mattered so much to Matt,” he said. “And more than anything else in this world, I want to make him happy.”
In August 2024, he proposed at Barberian’s Steak House in Toronto beneath a photo of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton reportedly getting engaged — for the first time — at the same dinner table 60 years earlier. (Mr. Ward is a big fan of the actress.)
After yet another conversation about his aversion to marriage, which proved to be a red herring, Mr. McGillis presented a disappointed Mr. Ward with a gift. When Mr. Ward opened the gift and found a Polaroid photo of a Cartier ring he adored, he started bawling. (Mr. McGillis wanted to wait until after the proposal to buy the ring to avoid the possibility of Mr. Ward’s colleagues spilling the beans.)
“When I saw his face, I kind of understood marriage a little more,” said Mr. McGillis, who graduated from Laurentian University in Sudbury, where he grew up, with a bachelor’s degree in communications. “I’ll remember that look for the rest of my life.” Mr. Ward, who grew up in Toronto, attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
At their wedding on Jan. 30 at the Windsor Arms Hotel in Toronto, the couple stood by the ballroom entrance to greet each guest as a pianist and violinist played and cocktails were served.
At 8 p.m., the ceremony began. Andy Althoff-Burrows, a minister in the Canadian International Metaphysical Ministry, officiated before 150 guests. The couple exchanged vows and rings, kissed, and without realizing it, held each other in an embrace for several minutes.
On This Day
When Jan. 30, 2026
Where The Windsor Arms Hotel, Toronto
Kathy Griffin The night before the wedding, the couple attended a Kathy Griffin stand-up comedy show. When they returned to their hotel and walked into the elevator, they saw none other than Ms. Griffin, who is a hockey fan. When Mr. McGillis told her about his career, she asked the couple for a photo — and an invite to their wedding. “It set the tone for the rest of the weekend,” Mr. Ward said. (She ultimately couldn’t attend because she had a show in Ottawa on their wedding night.)
Five-Dollar Bills After dinner was served and the couple gave speeches from a balcony in the mezzanine, lit with candles and overlooking the party, three drag queens performed to start the party. The couple’s wedding planner, Shealyn Angus, covertly distributed five-dollar bills to guests during the show. “We had uncles going up, tipping drag queens and dancing with them,” Mr. McGillis said.
Sadiba Hasan reports on love and culture for the Styles section of The Times.
The post Heated? Yes. Rivalry? No. appeared first on New York Times.
