Guests at the January 10, 2014, wedding reception for Ron Dorfman ( left ) and Ken Ilio were amused to hear the story of how the couple, having met at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago's "Not Just Song & Dance" gala in 1994, ended up living the rest of their lives together.
They were seated at the same table, danced a few times, found each other interesting, and after dinner Dorfman drove Ilio to his home in East Lakeview. Neither had anything to write with, so Dorfman said he would contact their table host on Monday to get Ilio's phone number and make a date.
"That was a Saturday night," Dorfman told the 90 guests assembled at Phil Stefani's, 437 N. Rush. "Early Sunday afternoon, my phone rang." Ilio, a speed reader, had only a first name and a numberless street address to go on, but went methodically through the White Pages until he found a Ron on Sheridan Road. "Fortunately," Dorfman said, "I was in the Ds and not the Ws." The pair have rarely been apart since.
Dorfman, 73, and Ilio, 57, were married Dec. 13, in the chapel at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where Dorfman was being prepared for major heart surgery.
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The ceremony was officiated by hospital chaplain Barbara Zeman, a priest who initially was reluctant to unite "a lapsed Jew with a lapsed Catholic," but was quickly won over.
The wedding took place four days after U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman issued her first ruling in a class action brought by Lambda Legal and the ACLU with pro-bono counsel from Kirkland & Ellis and Miller Shakman & Beem. In that ruling, Judge Coleman ordered Cook County Clerk David Orr to issue marriage licenses immediately to Dorfman and Ilio and another couple ( Elvie Jordan and Challis Gibbs ) facing a life-threatening illness before the scheduled June 1 start date of legal same-sex marriage in Illinois.
That was what Orr wanted to do in the first place, so there were no disgruntled parties in the case, and an underlying class action continues that may strike down the June 1 date for all same-sex couples in Illinois regardless of health issues.
The couple had registered as domestic partners in Cook County shortly after County Clerk Orr instituted that program in 2003, but never bothered to file for Illinois civil union status. "It would have made no material or meaningful difference to us," Dorfman said, "because we've really been 'married' for 20 years. But with legal marriage, I know that Ken will have the spousal benefits of federal law for Social Security, inheritance, taxes, and all the other rights that surviving partners have to support their households. It's a great comfort."