Husbands Jeff Terry and Travis Griffin met growing up in Joplin, but didn’t reconnect – or fall in love – until after the 2011 Joplin tornado.
They spoke about some of the differences in their upbringings and about learning how to love each other during the early years of their marriage.
Alphabet Soup shares LGBTQ+ Missourians’ stories through portraiture and personal narratives.
Travis Griffin: So, his upbringing was extremely stable, you know, his parents were still married and still are. They lived in one home while he was growing up – the entire time.
Jeff Terry: They still live there. They've been there 50 years.
Travis Griffin: My parents divorced. It was a very messy divorce, you know, my mother and father remarried, so I had, you know, stepparents and things that he was never familiar with, especially being an only child.
So, it was just so different, and our lives were so different, and our approach to things were so different. I was kind of like strippers and cocaine, and he was more like Bible study, and – maybe not exactly like that.
So, I was just really uncomfortable and unsure of what love looked like, you know, I'd been in a couple relationships, but nothing that, you know, lasted longer than a tic tac.
Then I have this guy coming in – super stable, although he doesn't feel like he was stable. He was more stable than anything I had seen – extremely loving.
And I didn't necessarily realize what love languages were and how people express their love differently, you know, my folks, kind of express their love by providing or giving things.
Jeff would do small things like my laundry for me. He would mow the yard, things like – I mean, granted, I made sure that I broke machinery and tools and things like that to prevent –
Laughter
Jeff Terry: Yeah, I take care of anything related to power tools –
Travis Griffin: Appliances –
Jeff Terry: And lawn equipment because we've –
Travis Griffin: We've gone through a lot of cords.
Jeff Terry: Yeah, he just doesn't do well with those kind of things.
Travis Griffin: Not at all.
Jeff Terry: But –
Travis Griffin: You showed me what love really was, and you showed me, like, how unconditional love works.
My parents, I always felt like, "I will love you if" and Jeff wasn't like that. He's like, "I'll love you no matter what. We'll work through whatever we need to work through."
Jeff Terry: We're just supposed to be together.
Travis Griffin: Well, we came to the realization nobody else likes us. So, like, we couldn't leave our marriage because we couldn't find anybody else, because nobody else liked us, and that's just kind of a joke I tell.
Laughter
Jeff Terry: Yeah, we just joke about that. We're really, basically, just two cranky old queens.
Travis Griffin: Yeah.
Jeff Terry: That nobody else –
Travis Griffin: Kinda stuck in the era of our grandparents if you see our house.
Jeff Terry: I mean, nobody else would put up with us.
Travis Griffin: They wouldn't.
