“If you see me, you see him. You’ve heard the term ‘joined at the hip’? That’s us.”
Mark Labancz said he and his husband, William Lipski, share just about everything.
“Except I like salted butter, Bill likes unsalted,” laughed Labancz, while Lipski added, “Mark likes gravy, I prefer ketchup.”
Their nearly two-decade-long romance began on a blind date Dec. 7, 1996, at 12th Air Command. On Nov. 9, 2014, the couple was married at Trinity Memorial Church by the Rev. Donna Maree, and friends marked their 18th anniversary the next month with a wedding reception.
Labancz, 57, and Lipski, 58, moved in together shortly after their first meeting.
“I was in the Art Museum area and Bill was living in a home in Society Hill,” Labancz said. “We hit it off right away and we’ve been exclusive since day one. It was short into our relationship that Bill moved in here.”
Labancz hails from the Detroit area and Lipski from New York City, but both were transferred to Philadelphia for work.
Lipski worked for more than 30 years in the financial and actuarial industry, and Labancz for Sunoco, most recently in systems implementation and development. They have both since retired.
Lipski said he and Labancz have so much in common that their relationship is seamless.
“We lucked into it; I don’t think it feels like work at all,” he said.
“It’s just a perfect fit if there is such a thing,” Labancz added. “We may argue about what to have for dinner, but we agree on all the important stuff.”
Shortly after Pennsylvania legalized same-sex marriage last spring, the couple decided to “make it legal, so to speak,” Labancz said.
“We don’t need a piece of paper to tell us we belong together,” Lipski said. “But a marriage license allows us to take advantage of benefits that are applicable to married couples that we couldn’t take advantage of before. And I think part of it for me, in the back of my mind, was also to make a statement, to finally get this on the books.”
After 18 years together, the couple said that being legally married hasn’t changed much about how they view themselves or one another.
“We’re just doing the same thing, the same way we did all along,” said Labancz.