A former Dallas Cowboys football player will this weekend become the first NFL player to marry a man.
Jeff Rohrer, a former linebacker for the Texas American football team, came out publicly as gay on Wednesday.
"If I had told the Dallas Cowboys in the 1980s that I was gay, I would have been cut immediately," Rohrer told the New York Times.
"It was a different world back then. People didn't want to hear that."
Rohrer, 59, will marry his partner Joshua Ross, 36. They have been together for three years.
Mr Ross grew up near the Texas stadium where Rohrer used to play throughout his professional sports career in the 1980s.
He is now a skin-care expert and aesthetician in West Hollywood, while Rohrer is now a producer of television adverts in Los Angeles.
Rohrer told the Times: "I've given at least five people heart attacks with this news.
"But for the most part, many of my closest friends, including some of my former teammates with the Cowboys, could not have been more happy and supportive."
He said that one friend returned his wedding invitation because he "actually thought it was a joke".
