Imagine, for a moment, finding your perfect person. They’re kind, funny, driven, and honest. They share your interests and make you feel safe. They cook, they clean, and they’re attractive. And no, they aren’t AI generated but there is a slight snag, a small detail hidden in the fine print of the Ts & Cs. You’re a straight woman, they’re a gay man. But don’t worry, it’ll be fine.
For LA-based Samantha Wynn Greenstone, 38, and Jacob Hoff, 31, this is their reality. She’s straight, he’s gay, they’re in love and have a baby on the way. Any questions? Don’t worry, we’ll get to them.
The pair met at a callback for Fiddler on The Roof in 2015, when Jacob heard Samantha cackle from afar. “I just [heard] this insane cackle come through the wall of the theatre… I’m just sitting there thinking, whoever just did that, doesn’t give a f—k about anything in life”. They became fast friends, spending their first day together talking until 4am, and developed a close bond over the course of 18 months, until one day, when Samantha went to an energy healer. When the healer asked Samantha if she was seeing anyone, she sensed the hesitation as Samantha considered her unlikely feelings for Jacob, and told her: “whoever you are thinking of, this person and you share a spiritual umbilical cord.”
Samantha sent Jacob a message: “do you ever have feelings for me that are more than friendship?”. And, after fielding a few concerns (mismatched sexual orientations, not wanting to destroy a friendship, for starters), they decided to give a romantic relationship a go. They haven’t looked back since.
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Confused? Among the many thoughts screaming around your head are probably: How is Jacob gay if he’s married to a woman? Surely there must be other (secret?) liaisons going on? How does the whole thing work? Happily, the two are incredibly open about their experience on social media, with Samantha clear that she never wants to be pitied or viewed as unaware when it came to Jacob’s sexuality. “I think it’s better to own it, so that people can’t out you.”
As forJacob, he knows that people want him to re-label himself as “bi”, or pansexual, but he’s adamant that his choice of partner doesn’t define who he is. “It’s important to me, after years of harbouring anger and resentment because I couldn’t come out of the closet, to express my identity… and it hasn’t changed because Samantha is my partner.”
He’s aware of the misconception that he must be seeing men behind Samantha’s back, but he’s clear that their relationship is monogamous and that there’s no deception or polyamory within their marriage. When it comes to sex, they remain tightlipped. However, Jacob has previously mentioned in a New York Times podcast that his attraction to Samantha is, “an attraction to who she is, and the person that she is, and her entity. [It’s] not in that almost lustful sense.”
The pair describe each other as soulmates. “I couldn’t have written a better man, on paper,” says Samantha. “Not only does he have all of the qualities as a person in terms of who he is as a person, but then I get a handsome guy on top of it! And he likes musicals!” The way she sees it, she’s with the person who embodies all of the things she loves and values (including musical theatre), and the unlikelihood of finding all of that within one person makes Jacob’s sexual orientation feel like a relatively small matter to deal with by comparison.
While they acknowledge that it’s not exactly ideal that Jacob is gay and Samantha’s a woman, Jacob explains that, “Samantha is the package that my soulmate came in… this isn’t convenient for us, this is very inconvenient for us, yet somehow it has persevered and worked.”
I ask them about how others have received their relationship and they say that the most welcoming and understanding were their friends in secure marriages or partnerships, and the ones who rejected it were often single, or unlucky in love. And when it comes to the internet, they’ve found, weirdly, interestingly, and unexpectedly, that they’ve piqued the interest of Christian conservatives and others who had little to no experience of gay people before they stumbled across the couple.
As Samantha puts it, “we’re the gateway into the gay community for some people”. In terms of where they find the most vitriol, they say that it tends to come from younger gay men. “They think we’re trying to tell them to go and find a woman… or that this is some form of conversion therapy,” says Jacob, quickly emphasising that it’s not.
Samantha is the package that my soulmate came in… it’s very inconvenient for us, yet somehow it has persevered and worked
Now, a decade on from Samantha cackling her way into Jacob’s life, the pair are now awaiting the arrival of their first child and documenting their experience on social media to their five million followers.
They sing, they dance, they laugh, they have fun — and it’s hard not to get swept up in their joy. The pairing is as unlikely as they come, but sometimes, it seems, love can be found in the least likely of places and in the most unexpected of packages.
