They’re here, they’re queer and they’re fabulous! I first learned about the Beekman Boys from my straight friend, Ellie, who admonished me, “What do you mean you don’t know the Beekman Boys? You’re gay! Get with the program! I lave them!” (She has a Greek accent). If you’re already with the program, you know about the couple from their cable show “The Fabulous Beekman Boys,” their time as the season-21 winners on “The Amazing Race” or their rising lifestyle company Beekman 1802. The fab duo is here in Philadelphia for this weekend’s Philadelphia Home Show and I had a chance to speak to each of them about their adventures.
PGN: I noticed you have a bit of an accent.
BR: Yes, I’m from North Carolina.
PGN: Tell me what you like best about your hometown.
BR: It was a very nice, small, rural Southern town of about 3,000 people and everyone knew one another.
PGN: What’s a trait you got from your parents?
BR: Probably got my fixation with details. My father was a mason and my mother was a nurse. If you’re a mason and it’s not done right, your building is going to fall down. And if you’re in health care and you do something wrong, someone could die.
PGN: So Josh was your first boyfriend?
BR: Yup. He is the first and only guy I ever dated.
PGN: How did you figure out you were gay?
BR: I think it’s something that you know from the time you’re aware of certain things. But I grew up in a very evangelical family, so it just wasn’t anything that I would ever dream of exploring. It wasn’t until I moved to New York City to do my medical residency that I came out and started exploring.
PGN: When I went to school in I forgot all about everything I was supposed to be doing scholastically when I came out.
BR: [Laughs] Well I was very academically oriented and I was doing my residency so it’s not like I had a lot of spare time to get into trouble. I had to be at work at 5 a.m. and sometimes worked 36 hours straight, so there wasn’t a lot of party time.
PGN: I read your TV career got started in an interesting fashion.
BR: Yes, I’d gone back to business school and after graduating took a position at Mount Sinai Hospital. I was doing some clinical work and part of my job was to create a new center for older adults. I’d written [architect] I.M. Pei asking him to design the facility and after we came up with the design, I wrote to Martha Stewart asking her to be the benefactor. It was important to me to stress older people were still vital, productive and creative. Both of those represented that idea very well, so having them attached to the project was very symbolic. After that, I kept in touch with Martha and later worked for her.
PGN: You and Josh won “The Amazing Race” season 21. In the first episode you fell behind because you let a competing team go in front of you. Did you keep that fair-play mindset all the way through?
BR: It’s interesting, for the hard-core fans of the show, one of the things they got upset about is the fact that we weren’t super-competitive. We never became cutthroat and a lot of fans who are really into the “competition” part of the show hated the fact that we played a very collegial game and still won.
PGN: What do you think the social impact was of having two openly gay men who were congenial and friendly and didn’t feel the need to be über-masculine to compete?
BR: We often hear about homophobia because those are the stories that make the headlines but, for the vast majority of America, it’s not that they are homophobic, it’s that they’ve never been exposed to gay couples like us. When “The Fabulous Beekman Boys” debuted, it was the first reality show that focused on a gay couple in a long-term relationship. We would get letters every week that would say, “My husband would have never watched a show about a gay couple but he loves your show and now we realize you’re just like us.” In fact, at the end of “Amazing Race,” there’s a couple from the deep South that races monster trucks and they were … unexposed to gay culture. In his exit interview, one of the things he said was Josh and I opened his eyes to the fact that gay couples were just like he and his wife and loved each other just like they loved each other. It’s just been in the past few years that you’re seeing more mainstream representations of gay life. We like to say, “Yep, we’re just as boring as you are.”
PGN: Turning to the farm and show, I read it all started with some homeless goats.
BR: Right! Josh was the creative director at one of the largest advertising agencies in the city and I was working with Martha Stewart. In 2007, the economy was good and we thought we could afford to buy this million-dollar farm in upstate New York. We cashed in all of our savings and bought the place for a weekend getaway. Shortly after we bought it, we found a hand-written note in our mailbox that said, “My name is John and I grew up in this area on a dairy farm and I’m losing the farm. I have a herd of 80 goats. May I please bring them to your property to graze?” And at the very end he wrote, “and I am gay … ” If you watched the show you’ll know how much he loves those goats. He was such a sweetheart, there was no way we could let him part with his goats. Then in 2008 the recession hit and we both lost our jobs. We now had this huge mortgage and on top of it were supporting a farmer and his goats. We needed to find a way to make the farm sustain itself; that’s how the company started.
PGN: What are the best and craziest parts of being a farmer?
BR: Every day is crazy around here. It’s a very small village — 547 people — so there’s always some drama happening and everybody knows all about it or thinks they do. As for the best, I think what being on the farm has taught us is the importance of seasonality. Living in the city, you can get anything you want at any time you want it and you don’t appreciate anything. So moving to the farm where we raise about 80 percent of the food that we personally consume (the nearest grocery store is a 35-minute drive), you really learn to appreciate things. We can or pickle a lot of things but there comes a point, like in late February or early March, when we’ve consumed all of our tomatoes, so we don’t have a fresh tomato again until the end of summer. But when you bite into that first tomato in August, it’s the most amazing thing you’ve ever tasted. One of the things we do now, whether it’s with a piece of furniture that we’re designing or a recipe that we’ve come up with, we talk about heirlooms: something that’s well-crafted or has a story behind its development, something that will last generations. That’s what’s important to us in this throw-away society.
PGN: I love the way you two are conscious of community. Looking at the website for 1802, which is really well done by the way, I saw your pasta sauce has a funny name and an interesting story behind it.
BR: It’s called Mortgage Lifter. About a year after we bought the farm and lost our jobs, Josh was able to find a new job to help cover our mortgage. We’d decided to make a go of the farm, but it’s very capital-intensive just to get the place up and running. The first season of the show was about Josh moving back to the city and coming home on weekends while I stayed full-time to try to get the farming business up and running. At that point we’d been together for 10 years and figured that our relationship was solid enough that we could handle a year apart. That year turned into five years of sacrifice and to help pay the mortgage, we decided to do a pasta sauce. There’s a variety of tomatoes called the Mortgage Lifter and the story behind it is it was first grown by a farmer in 1929 in West Virginia and was so successful, it paid off his mortgage. So we made it very transparent that we were going to be using the profits to pay off the mortgage on our farm. We planted the tomatoes that spring, not knowing that we were going to run the Amazing Race. In mid-June we won the million but couldn’t tell anyone yet. So when we began producing the sauce, our mortgage had already been paid off and we wanted to pay it forward; we knew there were a lot of small farms struggling and not everyone would have a chance to be on “The Amazing Race”! We decided 25 percent of the profits from the sauce would go to other small farms to help pay down their mortgages. Every February, farms can apply for the Lift award and we have three independent agricultural experts who choose a farm. It has to be a small farm and they have to be doing some community practice that other farms can learn from. Last year, we gave out $13,000 and this year are giving $20,000. Mortgage Lifter pasta sauce will be in every Target in America this spring, so we’re hoping the prize will be even more substantial next year.
PGN: You’re becoming the new Paul Newman! So are you excited about being in Philadelphia?
BR: Oh yes, one of the companies that “made us” was Anthropology. When we first started out, they were making goat-milk-based beauty products. They were our first big wholesale order so we’ve been to Philly quite a few times working with them. We love Philly.
PGN: Your favorite Philly club?
BR: We are not really club people. I never even had my first alcoholic beverage until I began dating Josh at 25, but Josh has a much more checkered past. [Laughs] He was a drag queen during the days of Limelight and the Tunnel and all those places at the end of the club kids scene. He’s been there and done that, whereas I never had enough exposure to be interested in club life.
PGN: I can’t wait to ask him about that, but let’s wrap up with some random questions.
PGN: If you were a fruit what type would you be?
BR: Probably pineapple: sweet on the inside but a little prickly on the outside.
PGN: Any tattoos or piercings?
BR: Nope. I’m unadorned.
PGN: A word beginning with the first letter of your first name that sums you up.
BR: A “b” word. I’d say boyish.
PGN: What’s the most mischievous thing your pet llama, Polka Spot, has done?
BR: She taught herself to jump the fence. We couldn’t figure how she was getting out until one day we saw her run and leap over the fence and it was so funny because she flattened out her whole body like a torpedo and when she landed on the other side, she just stopped and ate the grass.
PGN: I guess it’s not just people who think it’s greener … What’s the secret to being fabulous?
BR: Having your own definition of what fabulous is.
PGN: OK. Josh time. I was going to joke that I don’t usually do two guys at once but that sounded wrong. Tell me about yourself.
JKP: I was born in Albany but raised in Wisconsin so I consider myself a polite Midwesterner. I have a brother two years older than me and two great parents. My dad was in marketing.
PGN: Is that how you got into the field?
JKP: No, he was more into … well now that you mention it maybe it was, but certainly not on purpose. I was more on the creative side of marketing and he was more on the business end.
PGN: What were you like as a kid?
JKP: It would depend on who you ask! My mom would say that I was a terrible handful, just a bit dramatic.
PGN: Were you involved in theater at school?
JKP: Oh God yes, I was the triple crown of senior superlatives — drama, choir and band.
PGN: What instrument did you play?
JKP: Bassoon … not so cool. I was dancing to the beat of my own bassoon.
PGN: Where did you go to college?
JKP: Michigan State. I was an English major.
PGN: Ah yes, in addition to your farming, you’ve written two bestselling memoirs, a novel and three cookbooks. I want to read, “I am Not Myself These Day.”
JKP: Ah, the dirty book.
PGN: I can handle it! By the way, what did you guys decide about your married names?
JKP: We decided I already had a hyphen in my name and Josh Kilmer-Purcell-Ridge was one hyphen too many. We just stuck with our own names. Everyone thinks we’re Beekman anyway.
PGN: I read people keep calling you the Beekman Brothers and think you’re siblings.
JKP: Constantly, and then they’ll ask us about our wedding. It’s very strange.
PGN: Who is Aquadisiac?
JKP: She’s my drag character. When I got to the big city I was hesitant to cut loose until the mask of Aqua allowed me to explore while being a different person.
PGN: I read that you performed as Aqua all across the globe.
JKP: I would work anywhere that they paid to send me and this was before drag queens were on your TV set every night; it was still quite edgy.
PGN: What was a best international Aqua moment?
JKP: It would probably be Tokyo where I performed at a high-powered business executive’s son’s wedding. It was very odd, but interesting. Being a 7-foot blond-haired drag queen in Japan was pretty noticeable.
PGN: What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s happened on a date?
JKP: I can’t think of anything offhand; I was probably drunk for the worst ones.
PGN: What were your best and worst moments on “The Amazing Race”?
JKP: The best was outside of Bangladesh. It was about 110 degrees and we were exhausted and tired and trying to get to the finish line when this wave of children joined us. They all started chanting, “Beekman Boys!” It carried us to the finish line.
PGN: I would have thought it was winning at ping pong against the Chinese junior champion?
JKP: Oh yeah, my first-ever sports win. That was early on before things started getting really tough. I would say my worst was in Amsterdam. On the show you don’t get to eat or drink much and I’d lost about 15 pounds, so I was running across the field in the middle of the night, in the rain, trying to hold my pants up and fell and sprained my ankle. We still had three legs of the race left.
PGN: I’ve seen clips and watched the first episode of your season and I don’t know how you did it. I’ll probably binge-watch the rest of it tonight.
JKP: As you watch it you’ll never believe that we won but … we did. We didn’t win a single challenge until the last one.
PGN: Cool. So who saw the farm first?
JKP: We both did. We’d spent a weekend in Sharon Springs and on the way home saw a historic sign of what we thought must be a museum. We went to check it out and saw the for-sale sign. There was no reason for us to buy a farm and we never thought we could afford it but fell in love with it.
PGN: Were you always spontaneous or was this one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments?
JKP: It was an opportunity that presented itself and we weren’t sure what it meant but we felt strongly about it so we jumped in with both feet. Same thing with “The Amazing Race”: We’d always loved the show but never imagined being on it.
PGN: How did that come about?
JKP: We were doing a cookbook signing and this old woman came up to us. She had an oxygen tank and said, “I just love your show. My neighbor and I watch it every week.” I said, “Thank you, that’s very sweet” and she responded, “My neighbor is the president of CBS Reality Television.” We didn’t realize she was serious and joked, “Why aren’t we on ‘The Amazing Race’?” She said, “I don’t know, I’ll ask her.” By the time we got home, we got a call to be on the show.
PGN: That’s an amazing story. So, as a farm owner, what’s the craziest thing that has happened?
JKP: Every day is unpredictable; between the weather and the animals and the crops, anything can happen. I think the craziest thing was the first year when the goats started having babies. They each had two to five babies and we had about 100 goats. It was like a Disney horror movie! At one time, the farm was filled with almost 600 goats.
PGN: I worked as an animal wrangler on the movie “Beloved.” We had turkeys and I couldn’t believe the racket that they made. I was ready to go back to the city where it was quieter! Do goats make a lot of noise?
JKP: They make an incredible amount of noise, especially the small kids. But the births were surprisingly easy. Coming from Manhattan — where, when you think of birth, you think of Lamaze classes and yoga and water births and it’s so involved — on a farm you go to bed and when you wake up there are six kids on the ground.
PGN: Talk a little about Beekman 1802, “the fastest-growing lifestyle brand in the United States.”
JKP: That’s what they say. We didn’t know what to do with all the goat milk we had and we met a woman who was producing this great goat-milk soap. We began working with her and it was our very first product. Then she introduced us to a neighbor who wove incredible textiles in her living room and we thought, Oh, we can sell these too, and she in turn introduced us to a blacksmith down the road, etc., etc. Now we work with over 50 different local artisans. Sometimes we find people with things that are perfect, ready to sell, and sometimes we help design something a little more marketable. It’s a really collaborative effort.
PGN: I don’t know that soap would be the first thing I’d think of making out of goat’s milk.
JKP: Well, we thought about cheese, the obvious first choice, but it takes about a year to get certified for that and we needed to start generating funds right away.
PGN: I told Brett I loved your website with the live baby goat cam, recipes and tips.
JKP: Our business and life are one in the same. There are a lot of companies and brands that try to portray a certain lifestyle but they are just doing it to get you to buy stuff. But with us, everything we make and sell are things we and our neighbors use and like. We are living the life we show.
PGN: Now, it’s your turn for random questions. What’s your best scar?
JKP: It’s on my ring finger, from chopping kindling as a kid.
PGN: If you could have a dinner party and invite three guests, alive or dead, who would be your top three choices?
JKP: There would be no question, it would be my grandparents. I’d scooch around the table so I could fit them all.
PGN: I’ll count the grandparents as one guest. Who else?
JKP: Eartha Kitt … and William Beekman!
The Beekman Boys will take the main stage at the Philadelphia Home Show at noon and 4:30 p.m. Jan. 24 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, 12th and Arch streets. For more information, visit phillyhomeshow.com. For more information on Beekman 1802, visit beekman1802.com.
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