Colman Domingo may not have won Best Actor at last night’s Oscar Awards, but he went home with an even better prize: his husband Raúl.
The power couple stunned on the red carpet — not a surprise for the Sing Sing star, who’s an undeniable style icon — and had the whole internet swooning over their relationship. “Good for everyone involved here. Like heartfelt congratulations,” one viral post about the couple reads.
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The lovefest for the Domingos included sharing their adorable meet-cute story, which Colman shared on The Graham Norton Show last year. He started by setting the scene: the street outside a Walgreens in Berkeley, California, in 2005.
“I’m walking in and I see someone walking out,” Domingo recalled. “Has beautiful hair down to here, a lip piercing — beautiful, beautiful. I see this guy and we look at each other. I’m like, ‘Oh my god.’”
Both men were preoccupied — Domingo was on the phone, and his mysterious stranger was locked in a heated conversation — but they couldn’t help catching each other’s eyes over and over.
“I get off the phone. They walk off down the street, but he keeps looking back,” he said. “And I wave, but he just keeps going. And then, I’m just dumbfounded.”
Domingo wasn’t sure how to reconnect with his mystery man: “Maybe I’ll come back next Sunday and he’ll be here. I’m that kind of hopeless romantic,” he mused.
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“We’re leaning into the millennial angst of the property rather than fine-tuning this for kids,”
“Anyway, cut to three days later. I’m trying to buy a used computer, and I was just scanning Craigslist,” Domingo continued. “I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll place one of those missed connections ads. I wonder if they work.’”
That’s when Domingo learned he and his soon-to-be partner had the same idea. “I go to page 2 of them as I’m reading, and I see, ‘Saw you outside of Walgreens, Berkeley.’ He placed an ad for me two hours before,” he said. “I jumped up. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? That’s me!’ He described me with my fauxhawk — it was 2005 — and I was like, ‘Get out of here.’”
“We met up three days later. We had our first date,” he went on. “I was trying to be a good boy and go home. He said, ‘Can you stay over?’ I said, ‘Sure, but let’s just cuddle.’ We cuddled. I thought he was asleep. At 4 o’clock in the morning, I couldn’t sleep, and I said, ‘I think I love you and you’re about to change my life.’ And we’ve been together for almost 19 years now.”
Talk about a Hollywood love story. Domingo did more at the Oscars than set new trends on the red carpet; during a commercial break at the ceremony, he led the star-studded crowd in an impromptu dance party, an unaired moment that had at least one fan reaching “fomo levels never felt before.” Same, diva.
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