June Martinez-Bailey and Harry Winston Martinez-Bailey are renewing their vows on April 24 — the couple’s two-year wedding anniversary — in New York City.
“We are so blessed and in love,” June said. “So we said, ‘Why not?’”
June and Harry tied the knot in the city that never sleeps in 2013, and again in 2014. The second time around, Harry decided to take June’s last name and, according to June, became the first man in Pennsylvania to do so, and only the seventh in the United States.
“It was a completely spontaneous thing,” said June. “We woke up one morning and decided to get married. We knew it had to be in New York.”
June, 50, a native of the Bronx, and Harry, 38, met in 1998 in Philadelphia through mutual friends and have been together ever since.
June says couples come to them all the time for advice since they have been through the process twice now. They’re also known for their “mini zoo,” among other things: They own five snakes, two ferrets, two cats, one iguana, two birds and three dogs.
June, a peer assistant for Philadelphia FIGHT’s TREE program and co-founder of the Mayor’s LGBT Task Force, was recently nominated for the David Acosta Revolutionary Latino Award. She was also the first Latina trans woman to give a keynote speech at the Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference in 2006. Harry now helps take care of June’s mother full-time.
