{"id":48185,"date":"2021-03-04T17:22:53","date_gmt":"2021-03-05T00:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-gov-jared-polis-and-longtime-partner-marlon-reis-are-engaged\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:42:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:42:00","slug":"colorado-gov-jared-polis-and-longtime-partner-marlon-reis-are-engaged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-gov-jared-polis-and-longtime-partner-marlon-reis-are-engaged\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and longtime partner, Marlon Reis, are engaged"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Gov.
Gov. Jared Polis, left, stands with his partner, Marlon Reis, and waves to the crowd after he is sworn in as the new governor of Colorado. Polis proposed to Reis on Dec. 6. The couple has been together for 17 years.<\/span>Kathryn Scott\/Special to The Colorado Sun<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is engaged. And he picked an interesting moment to pop the question.<\/p>\n

First gentleman Marlon Reis was feeling crummy the day it happened. His condition was deteriorating after battling a coronavirus infection for more than a week. His oxygen saturation levels had dropped to a concerning level. A doctor told him it was time to go to the hospital.<\/p>\n

\"Gov.-elect
Gov.-elect Jared Polis stands with his partner, Marlon Reis, and their children, Cora and Caspian, in the west wing before his inauguration at the Colorado Capitol on Jan. 8, 2019.<\/span>Aaron Ontiveroz\/The Denver Post pool<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Gov.
Gov. Jared Polis and First Gentleman Marlon Reis show off their engagement rings. The rings are inscribed in Hebrew that translates to &#x201c;Isaiah 11:6.&#x201d;<\/span>Handout photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cI was getting my things ready. My daughter was crying in the corner \u2013 she didn\u2019t want me to go,\u201d said Reis, 39, who recounted the proposal to The Colorado Sun. \u201cMy son was asking me a lot of technical questions: \u2018When are you coming back? Do they know exactly what\u2019s wrong?\u2019 It was a very tense moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polis was urging Reis to hurry up, but reassuring him that he\u2019d be OK.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat irked me even more,\u201d Reis said.<\/p>\n

The chaos came to an abrupt stop when Polis got down on one knee and asked Reis, his partner of 17 years, to marry him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the absolute perfect time,\u201d Reis said. \u201cI said to him, \u2018I couldn\u2019t breathe before. Now, I really can\u2019t breathe.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The couple has kept their Dec. 6 engagement mostly private for the past three months. The Sun is first to report the news. Polis is the nation\u2019s first openly gay elected governor.<\/p>\n

The couple\u2019s 6-year-old daughter stopped crying after Polis popped the question. She was excited about the prospect of being their flower girl. Reis said their 9-year-old son \u2013 \u201cin his typical fashion\u201d \u2013 said \u201cI really don\u2019t like your engagement ring.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ring is made of tungsten and is inscribed with a passage from Isaiah 11:6. \u201cVery plain, perfectly in keeping with both our personalities,\u201d is how Reis describes it.<\/p>\n

Polis, 45, and Reis haven\u2019t picked a date yet for their wedding, though their children are lobbying them and are persuasive. The governor had been planning to ask Reis to marry him for seven months.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt put such a spring in my step,\u201d Reis said. \u201cWhen I got to the hospital, I wasn\u2019t scared anymore. I said, \u2018I have a great relationship, a great family that I\u2019m going to be coming home to after this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Reis was released from the hospital after two days and has since recovered from COVID-19. Polis also caught coronavirus but had only mild symptoms.<\/p>\n

Reis, an animal advocate and writer, said coronavirus has made it clear to people across the world that things we took for granted \u201ccan still be taken away from us, sometimes without any notice.\u201d That\u2019s what made the timing of the proposal so perfect.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s not wait. Let\u2019s live life while we have it to live,\u201d he said. \u201cLet\u2019s celebrate and look out for each other and keep caring about the things that we care about. Even though we\u2019re dealing with these circumstances, we can\u2019t give up on our dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n

To read more, visit The Colorado Sun<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to covering Colorado issues. To learn more, go to coloradosun.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

question at a tense moment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[233,819,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-48185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-gov-jared-polis","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48185"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87323,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48185\/revisions\/87323"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48185"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=48185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}