Two Gay “Business Partners” Who Appeared on a ’90s Game Show Lit Up the Internet. Their Real-Life Story Is Wild.

In 1991, Hermosa Beach, California, set painters Tim Leach and Mark Dammann landed a spot as contestants on the ’90s version of the syndicated game show Supermarket Sweep. When host David Ruprecht asked how the two knew each other, Mark answered, “We’re business partners.” Thirty-three years later, a Twitter user watching old episodes affectionately posted: “I’m like oh I’m sure.”

As many people on the internet have discovered the past few days, those two contestants were business partners—but they were also very much a couple. In fact, they are still together, they live in Chicago, and things are going great. I called Tim and Mark on the phone to talk about their 1991 game-show experience, about coming out to their parents, and about the incredible path their families took afterward. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Dan Kois: Did you audition for game shows a lot in those days?

Tim Leach: Game shows were advertised in the Los Angeles Times classifieds. Every Sunday we would look at them and say, “Well, we should try out and see if we could make a few bucks.” We auditioned for Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! but didn’t get on. Then we tried out for Supermarket Sweep.

That’s a show like The Price Is Right where you get plucked out of the audience.

Mark Dammann: Well, you know you’re a contestant.

Tim: They tell you in advance that you’re going to be chosen, but they tape a bunch of episodes at once in this big studio in Studio City, and you don’t know which one you’ll be on.

Have you watched your episode recently?

Tim: We just watched it because of all this happening!

Had you planned in advance for what you would say when the host asked you how you know each other?

Tim: Well, there were some family members, grandparents and things, who still didn’t know.

Mark: And my parents still didn’t know.

Tim: I can’t honestly say what they would have done if we’d said we were together. Would they have asked us to rephrase it? Anyway, we just said we were business partners. Which has become a meme now, but in this case, it was true!

Mark: We had just started our set-painting business, mostly for commercials and cruise ships.

When you said that, was everyone on set like, “Oh, I’m sure”?

Tim: Everyone knew! We were pretty open about it with the other contestants and the producers. We were out in our everyday lives. It was just on the air we kept it quiet.

When the host asked you what the weirdest backdrop you’d ever painted was, you had a moment.

Tim: We were both like, “Uhhh … This is a family, G-rated show—what can we say?”

You answered, “Something for a rock group.” What’s the real answer?

Mark: Probably it would be the same. We painted some backdrops for rock bands that were really something.

Tim: We painted this one very buxom, bikini-clad woman. That’s what flashed through our minds at the time. This huge woman, and these two guys are painting her. The art director came in and said, “Her face looks kind of mannish.”

Mark: We joked about that a lot. She was 20 feet tall.

Mark, you really cleaned up in the opening word game. The idea that any of those other couples would know what tarragon was …

Mark: Yes, maybe that was a giveaway.

Tim: I can’t believe you knew what tarragon was!

Mark: The biggest laugh I got from people who actually knew me was the clue for Sugar Daddies. Everyone was like, “Of course you knew that one.”

Tim: When I buzzed in and the host said, “Tim, with his fast hands …” our friends laughed.

Did you give the producers side-eye when they dressed you in those pink sweatshirts?

Tim: They were red on the set! On camera they looked Pepto-Bismol pink. When I saw us on TV, I said, “Oh my God.”

The whole thing really is kind of perfect camp. The show was always so hetero-coded, with the wives who know groceries and the clueless husbands.

Mark: Exactly!

How did you prepare for the big sweep at the end?

Tim: Once we knew we were going to audition for the show, we spent two weeks recording every episode on our old VCR. We drew out a map of the store. We were so sure we were gonna win.

Tim, you did the running for the sweep. What do you remember about those 2 minutes and 30 seconds?

Tim: The frozen meat cases where you grab the meat—it turns out that meat is frozen every night and then thrown back under those hot lights all day to thaw. It’s all sort of grayish-green. It’s frozen inside, but the surface was really gross.

You ended up with a score total much lower than the other two couples. What happened?

Tim: I was really surprised how low it was! I think it was just nerves. The cart was very difficult to control. One mistake was that I got the turkeys early on and they’re really heavy, and then the cart was really heavy. And you have a cameraman chasing you around the whole time, so you can’t turn around quickly.

Mark: One of the other couples, the one who got second place, hit an aisle endcap and knocked all the stuff over. They had to stop us and set it all back up. They got a deduction—that’s why they didn’t win.

Well, losing didn’t poison your relationship, because you’re still together. What happened when it aired?

Tim: My side of the family all knew about us. My parents knew. But Mark’s parents didn’t know. His family lived in Houston, and my family lived in Galveston. Every Christmas we would come home and I would say hi to his parents at the airport and then we would go to separate houses for the holidays.

Surely watching you on Supermarket Sweep must have been enough for your parents to figure it out, Mark.

Mark: Nope!

Tim: Nope!

Mark: When we’d been dating 11 years, I still hadn’t told them, and my mom died. Tim’s dad died the same year.

Tim: Mark came home and said, “I feel so much regret about never having that conversation with my mom. There’s a part of me she never knew.” I said, “Well, maybe you can bring yourself to tell your dad soon.”

Mark: There was this radio show we listened to while were painting in the studio, these two psychologists, a married couple. I called in and really asked them, “How do I come out to my dad?” They said, “You’ve been together 11 years? He must know in his heart. You just have to say it.” So I just said it.

And he knew, right?

Mark: No, it was a total surprise.

Really!

Tim: Eleven years we’d been living together. He just thought, Well, they’re young, and L.A.’s expensive, and I guess you just have to have a roommate.

Mark: Long story short, my dad ended up marrying Tim’s mom.

What?!

Tim: We introduced them to each other so they’d have somebody to go to the movies with. The next I know, I’m getting phone calls from my mom saying, “Guess who I ran into in Houston? Don!” I’d say, “You ran into him?” “Well, he said if I was up there I should give him a call.” Then we’re getting a call from my sister saying, “How well do you know this guy? Because Mom’s putting on lipstick.” I said, “He’s been basically my father-in-law for years!”

Mark: We ended up becoming a conjoined family. They were married in 1994. Our parents became our biggest support system.

That’s an incredible story.

Tim: For a while, Lloyd Schwartz, a producer, the son of Sherwood Schwartz who created The Brady Bunch, was trying to sell it as a TV movie. It never panned out.

I would’ve watched that.

Tim: I guess now it would be a Hallmark movie.

And you’re married now, too.

Tim: We were married in 2008, the first day you could get married, June 17. Now we both work as flight attendants for Southwest.

Mark: We were the first married same-sex couple to work there.

Tim: Mark joined Southwest after me, and I went down to Dallas to see them pin on his wings, and everyone stood up and applauded for us. It’s always been a good place to work, but I still thought, That is not what would have happened 30 years ago.

When you rewatch your episode and you look back on those two guys, how do you feel? What would you tell your younger self?

Tim: I’d just want to say that everything’s gonna be OK, and you can be yourself. Embrace who you are, whatever that means. Life has been pretty great.

Mark: There’ll be some rough patches, but you’ll get through them. And as long as we have each other, you’ll make it. And it’s been 41 years, and we’ve made it.