‘Mathis Family Matters’ Gave Them the Courage to Be Openly in Love

Style|At First They Hid Their Love, Then a Reality Show Gave Them Courage

On Valentine’s Day in 2016, after a singles bar crawl on H Street in Washington with friends, Gregory Malik Mathis invited the group back to his apartment. At the end of the evening, as everyone slowly trickled out, one person, a friend of a friend named Richard Elliott Cooper, stayed behind.

“There is a debate about who made the first move,” said Mr. Mathis, who interpreted Mr. Cooper’s reluctance to leave as a signal.

“I tell everyone it was Greg,” Mr. Cooper said. “He was sitting on the couch, and he said, ‘Why don’t you come on over and sit beside me?’”

“That was a big step for me because I wouldn’t say anything like that normally,” Mr. Mathis said.

The two quickly clicked. Mr. Mathis was engaged by Mr. Cooper’s intellect, and Mr. Cooper found Mr. Mathis to be “completely genuine.”

At the time, neither of them was openly gay (though Mr. Mathis had come out to his family and close friends in college), so for the next two or so years, they kept their love private. Slowly, they began revealing their relationship to family, friends and acquaintances, and years later, in June 2022, they came out to the world on “Mathis Family Matters,” a reality show on E! network about Mr. Mathis’s family. Mr. Mathis’s father is Gregory Ellis Mathis, best known for his 24-season daytime television show, “Judge Mathis.”

Mr. Mathis, 35, grew up in Detroit and Los Angeles and studied political science at the University of Michigan before leaving college in 2012 to be a staff assistant for the civil rights activist and politician Jesse L. Jackson Jr. Later, he was a deputy field organizer in Ohio for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012. After that, Mr. Mathis worked in politics for nearly a decade, most recently as a senior policy adviser for Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, from 2018 to 2021.