Judas Priest Legend Reveals Secret Wedding to His Longtime Partner

If you thought Judas Priest vocalist Rob Halford would never be married, you’ve got another thing coming.

The 74-year-old rocker confirmed last week that he quietly married Thomas, his longtime partner of over 30 years, on last week’s episode of Queer the Music, a podcast hosted by Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters.

Halford said the two got married in a “simple” but “beautiful” ceremony, and revealed it took the two so long because of his husband’s “extremely conservative” background causing a reluctance to tie the knot.

“I stopped asking, ‘Let’s get married.’ ‘No, I don’t want to get married.’ ‘Oh, let’s just get married. We’ve been together forever.’ ‘No, I don’t want to get married,’” Halford said. “And then suddenly on one of our night walks, he goes, ‘I think we should get married.’ [I went] straight home [and got] on the phone to get a pastor.”

The couple called up a pastor and then some of their closest friends, Jim Silvia (the band’s former manager) and his wife, to witness the two finally say “I do” to each other.

“There were just four of us around the pool, around the cactus, the heavy metal cactus,” he said. “And it was over in an instant. But it was just a beautiful, simple ceremony.”

He said it was a “nice thing” to finally do it, adding that it “seems like you’ve completed something in your relationship. More than anything else, the commitment goes to another level when you get married. It’s a great thing to do. And if it doesn’t work, that’s life.”

“But, I think after being together for 35 years, it’s working,” he said.

Halford broke barriers in 1998 when he casually came out of the closet during an MTV interview.

“I just said: ‘Speaking as a gay man, blah blah blah.’ And those simple words resonated and went to a lot of places. As I went back to the hotel afterwards, I thought, ‘That’s it now. Everybody knows I’m a gay guy,’” he joked in a 2024 interview. “Everybody in the band knew I was gay… And wouldn’t you believe it? All the fans were like, ‘Well, we always thought you were gay anyway.’ And there was me thinking I’m the only gay in the village!”