Korean War veteran celebrates 1st anniversary with husband after coming out at age 90

Many individuals are forced to stay in the closet for the majority of their lifetime. They are afraid to reveal their sexual orientation to their family and friends, fearing that society might judge and shun them. A 94-year-old gentleman named Kenneth Felts had lived 90 years of his life without embracing his true self until he came out to the public over a Facebook post. The Colorado-based Felts' confession on social media also helped him find his husband, Johnny Hau and they even celebrated their 1st wedding anniversary in 2024.

Felts came out as gay in 2020 when he was 90 years old, as reported by PEOPLE. The retired Korean War veteran was living at his Arvada home after getting diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2019. Felts was undergoing chemotherapy when the COVID-19 pandemic forced him to lead a completely isolated life. But that was about to change for the veteran. One of his friends convinced him to start writing a memoir while living alone. Felts poured his heart out in the journal, where he mentioned his first love, Philip Jones. At one point when his daughter, who came out as a lesbian after her college graduation, found her father crying.

Upon asking him about his cause of sadness, Felts replied that "he should have never left Philip." "I outed myself to my daughter," he recalled. "I had never intended to out myself to anybody, but I outed it to her. She took it very well. So I decided to put it on the net, on my Facebook and instead of doing it to my friends, I did it to the public, unknowingly." Felts' story captured the attention of global media and soon it connected him with his husband, Hau. "It took a lot of courage for him to come out and I wasn't really fully out also," Hau, who works in IT, told the outlet. "I just felt like I wanted to talk to someone about this."

Felts admitted that after meeting Hau, his life completely transformed. "Everything has just bloomed," Felts shared. "The freedom I have to speak out, go around, things like that — I'm a new person. I'm a different person." Hau was the one who reached out first and went on a blind date with Felts. "We met on a Friday evening, and we had our masks on, of course, because of COVID," Felts mentioned. "We went up to the salad course and then we were able to unmask. We talked and I liked what I saw and I liked what I heard."

The huge age gap between them was the least of their concerns because the duo immediately felt connected. They stayed up late that night and continued talking to each other. Their relationship grew deeper and Hau started to visit Felts every weekend and on Tuesdays. The pair finally got hitched at a small wedding in their backyard on July 8, 2023. "It was a real close family affair there, and it was just a wonderful feeling, especially to know that Johnny was going to be mine forever," Felts gushed.

Felts was born in 1930 into a fundamental Christian family. After completing his college education, he joined the Navy and served in the Korean War from 1950 to 1954. After the war, he started working as an insurance investigator in California. Felts identified as a straight man back then, but at one point, he met a man named Philip Jones, who worked in the same office and approached Felts to help him with some forms at one point. Felts and Jones grew closer as they started meeting for coffee and then eventually started dating.

Felts and Jones kept their relationship a secret at that point. "Sitting in church one day, he was in the choir singing and I was in the pews and I was bombarded with guilt," Felts reminisced. "This basic Christian indoctrination that I'd had all my life kicked in." Felts eventually broke things off with Jones by "ghosting" him and moved back to Dodge City, Kansas. He got married in 1962 and became a father after 10 years. But his relationship with his wife ended in a divorce back in 1980. "I started looking for Phillip again," he said. Despite trying to call every Philip Jones' number he could find in the phonebook, he failed to track down the first love of his life. Felts is now living his life to the fullest and published his memoir "My Handful of Stars: Coming Out at Age 90" in 2022.