TONY & MICHAEL

Photos by Aaron McGrath aaronmcgrathweddings.com

Back before the internet was a thing, the classified ads section of GCN often took up three pages, with people using it as a resource to find everything from sex to life partners, to new places to live.

For this very special weddings issue, in the 30th year of GCN’s publication, we speak to two married couples who met through our hallowed pages. It’s good to know that we were there at the very beginning.

Back in 1992, there weren’t many ways to meet potential partners. Eyes might lock across a crowded gay pub, or friends might introduce you, but apart from that, a lot depended on wide chances. Tony Kelly decided to take the other big option at the time, he placed an ad in GCN’s thriving personal ads section looking for love.

“It was a boxed ad,” he remembers. “I said was a graduate, looking for a similarly minded man. was living at home at the time, and got a big envelope stuffed with replies, many of them giving me great detail about the kind of men they were.”

Oddly, the one that stood out the most had little of that detail. It was from teacher Michael O’Reilly, who had already met a cohort of gay friends through the GCN ads. The two arranged to meet, and the rest, as they say, is history.

“We met at the entrance to UCD, just off the Stillorgan dual carriageway,” Michael remembers.

“I was waiting at the bus stop, waiting for his car,” Tony chimes in. “When he arrived got into his car and we went to Lamb Doyles in the Dublin mountains for a drink.”