Quick Take
Gail Groves and Dinah Phillips, the first same-sex couple to be married in Santa Cruz County in June 2008, will lead this year’s Pride festivities alongside Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, who officiated their wedding. In being named for this honor, they bring attention to the importance of LGBTQ+ love being normalized and validated.
Gail Groves and Dinah Phillips of Corralitos were the first same-sex couple to be officially married in Santa Cruz County in June 2008.
Now, 18 years later, they will help kick off the county’s 51st annual Pride festivities as grand marshals, alongside Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, who officiated their wedding. The parade is the largest of its kind on the Central Coast, drawing about 7,000 people each year, and is the centerpiece of three days of festivities celebrating LGBTQ+ pride.
Santa Cruz Pride 2026
Friday: Festivities begin at 5 p.m. at the clock tower downtown, with a DJ, dancing and introduction to the three grand marshals.
Saturday: Queerlantis, a one-night microfestival, brings Irene the Alien from “RuPaul’s Drag Race” to the Veterans Memorial Building.
Sunday: The Pride parade begins at 11 a.m. at Pacific Avenue and Cathcart Street, ending at a festival on Cooper Street including drag performances from local kings and queens. The day wraps up with a Pride afterparty an afterparty starting at 3 p.m. at Cat Alley Street, featuring local tech house and hip-hop DJ Mimi.
More Pride events and info: Click here
Groves and Phillips moved in together in 1982, when they were mere strangers who met at a class for the Japanese martial art aikido at Santa Cruz’s London Nelson Community Center. Four months later, they decided they were a couple, and have been inseparable ever since.
Phillips said it didn’t occur to her or Groves to get married for many years, because they never thought gay marriage would be legal in the U.S. However, she remembered that Pellerin, who was the county clerk at the time, would do an annual presentation to the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors that she would end by saying that someday she hoped to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
“I would just roll my eyes and say, ‘I don’t know where she even came up with that idea, that is never going to happen,’” Phillips said. “It was so far beyond any possibility in our lives.”
But then on Feb. 12, 2004, then-mayor Gavin Newsom directed the San Francisco city clerk to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and everything changed for Phillips and Groves. Phillips said shortly after that, she had a dental appointment in the city, and she and Groves were reading about the update in the newspaper on the way there.
“And Gail said, ‘Well, let’s get married,’ And I said, ‘You know, if we ever get married, I’m going to do it with all our friends and have people around,’” Phillips recalled. “And so we got up there, and then it was like, ‘Let’s just drive by,’ and the scene was so amazing.”
“There was this huge line coming out of the city hall in San Francisco, and it went all the way around the building, and we just decided to get in line.”
They got married later that day, after waiting hours in line. Phillips said it was wonderful in the moment, but then the anxiety set in about its permanence. Ultimately, the California Supreme Court halted the marriages, and ultimately voided them in August 2004.
Four years later, on May 15, 2008, the California Supreme Court ruled that denying gay couples the right to marry violated the California Constitution, legally allowing same-sex couples to wed across the state. The day after that ruling, Groves and Phillips got married again – this time in Santa Cruz, surrounded by their friends, just as Phillips originally wanted.
“We asked Gail Pellerin to be the one who would marry us, and it meant so much to have her officiate our wedding,” Phillips said.
Years later, she called being named grand marshals for this year’s Pride parade “kind of a full circle moment.”
Over the past few decades, the couple became a pillar of the queer community in Santa Cruz, with Phillips officiating 50 LGBTQ+ weddings for couples all over the Bay Area and beyond, and Groves founding the Santa Cruz Women’s Self-Defense Collective and teaching there for over 20 years.
Groves said right now it’s more important than ever to normalize and validate same-sex couples. She mentioned that as of Wednesday, a Gallup poll recorded the lowest percentage since 2016 of people across the U.S. viewing gay or lesbian relations as moral.
“Anything we can do to let everybody know that gay people are OK. We do normal things, we fix breakfast in the morning, and marriage is definitely a way of showing that. And it does change you to get married, and it’s a good thing,” Groves said. “I just feel more settled.”
Phillips added that when you’re a same-sex married couple, you don’t have to explain your relationship to people as much because everyone knows that the word “wife” means a lifelong relationship, which is validating.
When they got the call that they would be this year’s grand marshals, the couple was surprised, but honored.
“We’re standing on the shoulders of the people who came before us, and we are beneficiaries,” Phillips said. “We’re thrilled to be able to represent ourselves and so many people we love.”
Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.
