The couple just celebrated their 10-year wedding anniversary.
Ellen DeGeneres is celebrating National Coming Out Day with a sweet tribute to her wife.
The Ellen DeGeneres Show host took to Instagram on Thursday to give her wife, Portia de Rossi, a sweet shout-out in honor of the special day. The couple shares a kiss in the sweet snap, taken onstage at DeGeneres' talk show.
DeGeneres and de Rossi started dating in 2004, and tied the knot in 2008. They celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary just two months ago, in August.
"It’s the greatest gift you could give yourself. #NationalComingOutDay," DeGeneres, who came out in 1997, captioned the shot.
DeGeneres made headlines when she -- and her character -- came out on an episode of her '90s sitcom. "My character, Ellen Morgan, came out as a lesbian, and I, Ellen DeGeneres, came out at the same time," DeGeneres recalled on a 2017 episode of her talk show. "It was the first time a lead character had come out."
"I can't tell you how challenging it was to get this episode made, and at the time, it was so controversial," she tearfully explained. "It was the hardest thing that I ever had to do in my life, and I would not change one moment of it because it led me to be exactly where I am today, standing in front of you, which is a joy."
In an interview with The Advocate in August 2005, de Rossi revealed that her relationship with DeGeneres allowed her to overcome her fears about coming out.
“My feelings for her overrode all of my fear about being out as a lesbian. I had to be with her, and I just figured I’d deal with the other stuff later,” she shared. “I respect her so much. She was so courageous and so loud in ’97, and now she is doing something that is more subliminal. She’s changing the world, she really is, and it’s exciting to be a part of that.”
The couple took their first bold step into the spotlight a month after they started dating when they walked the red carpet together at a Golden Globes after-party in January 2005.
"I think when I really, truly came out was the Golden Globes when Arrested Development was nominated,” de Rossi told James Lipton during an interview on Inside the Actors Studio years later.
See more on the couple in the video below.
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