Partner of Sally Ride Reflects On Their Hidden Relationship

The story does not record if Sally Ride rode her eyes when she looked at the plans of the first toilet kit that NASA set up for her female astronauts – but she would have had the right to do so. The space agency certainly knew how to pack for men, more or less providing them with the bases – deodorant, toothpaste, toothbrush, razor. Women would also get the essentials, but there would be more: lipstick, eyeshadow, eyeliner and, critically, up to 100 stamps – because who all knew how much the average woman would need during the average week in space?

This first toilete kit was scheduled before June 18, 1983, when the journey went in the air on the shuttle ChallengeBecoming the first American woman in space, breaking the genre barrier that the Soviets had broken with the cosmonaut of Valentina Tereshkova, just over 20 years earlier. The nonsense of the buffer was not the only indignity of NASA female astronauts in general and wrinkle in particular had to endure. His story is told in the new evocative documentary ExitA winner in 2025 of the Alfred P. Sloan feature film prize from the Sundance Film Festival.

Among the memorable moments experienced ride, there was the press conference before the flight during which a correspondent for Time magazine raised his hand and asked: “Dr Ride, some quick questions, sir”. There was also the journalist who asked Ride “Are you crying?” When faced with a particularly knotted problem during training. There was the Bouquet of Flowers Ride was given after the shuttle land, intended for a gift to the first heroine of American space – a gift in gift politely refused to accept, triggering all kinds of criticism in the consumer press.

More important than all this, however, was the private –extremely Private – to ride, in particular his 27 -year relationship with his life partner Tam O’Shaughnessy, a wedding name in all but which was not revealed until the death of a pancreatic cancer in 2012 at the age of 61, and O’Shaughnessy declared to the world in the Billology which she wrote to mark the death of her companion. Shortly before Ride’s death, O’Shaughnessy slowly addressed how – and if – she should reveal their secret more than the quarter of a century.

“I questioned Sally on this subject. I said, you know:” I am a little worried. I don’t know what I’m going to write, you know, how I’m going to sail on this subject “”, remembers O’Shaughnessy in a recent conversation with time, before the film released. “And she said,” You decide. Everything you decide will be the right thing to do. “”

The film, written, produced and directed by Cristina Costantini, Prime Minister on the National Geographic channel on June 16, and becomes available for streaming on Disney + and Hulu on June 17. As he reveals, Sally and Tam have made a lot of goods – and hard – the choices in the time they had together, and Ride did the same when he came to the professional trajectory that prevented him from space. There is no minimization to what extent the notion of female astronauts was foreign at the beginning, at least in the United States, the film includes a clip by Gordon Cooper, one of the seven original NASA astronauts, interviewed in the early 1960s. “Is there a place in the space program for a woman?” The journalist asked. “Well,” replied Cooper without a trace of a smile, “we could have used a woman and have piloted her instead of the chimpanzee.”

It was not until 1976, a decade and a half after Alan Shepard became the first American of the space, that NASA opened its process of selection of astronauts to women and people of color. More than 8,000 hopes applied; In 1978, NASA selected 35 to become astronauts, including three blacks, an American of Asian origin and six women. The journey was among them, just like Judith Resnik, who would lose his life when the shuttle Challenge exploded at the start of his tenth mission in January 1986. There was a lot of disabilities inside and outside NASA as for which the woman would fly first – a large part of the way there was among men as the flight of Shepard in 1961 – and Ride and Resnik were considered the main candidates. In the end, as Exit Rid, Ride was chosen because she struck the planners of the NASA mission as a little less distracted by celebrity by being number one, focusing more on the mission and less on the story it would do.

“She loved physics and she loved spatial exploration,” says O’Shaughnessy, “and with these things, she could be intense, motivated.”

Ride also liked O’Shaughnessy – Although it was a long devotion that was long. The two met when the journey was 13 years old and O’Shaughnessy was 12 years old and they were lining up to register to play in a tennis tournament in Southern California, where they both grew up. Rolling on several occasions, we have relentlessly up to its point on tiptoe, and O’Shaughnessy said: “” You walk on your toes like a ballet dancer “”, she recalls in the film. “This genre started our friendship. Sally was rather calm, but she spoke for eight minutes in a row on different players and how to beat them, how to make them.”

The two got closer quickly, but went to different directions, with ride studying physics at Swarthorus College in Pennsylvania for three semesters from 1968 and later at the UCLA for the summer semester before transferring to Stanford as a junior, and O’Shaughnessy becoming a professional tennis player from 1971 to 1974, finally playing in the United States Open and Wimbledon. O’Shaughnessy accepted his sexuality early, openly and enthusiastic.

“I was on the tennis circuit and there were a few queer women,” she told Time. “But it was also just the atmosphere, even the hetero women. No one really cared about who you slept … I was going to gay bars in San Francisco and dancing with my friends.”

For the journey, things were different. When she was in Stanford, she fell in love with her roommate and the two were together for four years. But Ride insisted on maintaining the relationship largely under the Wraps and this secret was a non-employment for her partner. “She could not bear to be so closed and decided to continue her life,” explains O’Shaughnessy.

Ride would later choose an opposite sexual partner, marrying his colleague astronaut Steve Hawley in 1982, a decision that was more than a simple accommodating pose for a public figure in a country not ready for homosexual marriage, but less than a real heart union. “They were very good friends,” says O’Shaughnessy. “They had a lot in common. He was astronomer, Sally was a physicist. They had things to say. They were both delighted to be selected to be astronauts and they both loved sport, so I think they had a solid friendship. ”

It was not enough. The two divorced in 1987, but even before they did it, Ride and O’Shaughnessy began to derive together as more than friends. At the time, O’Shaughnessy lived in Atlanta, after retiring from the tennis circuit; Ride, who lived in Houston, would make him frequently.

“I never thought we were becoming romantic,” said O’Shaughnessy, “but that made this afternoon in the spring of 1985. When she came to town, we were generally going to go shopping and long walks and spend time together. Back in my place one day, we just talked. To look at her and I could say she was in love with me.

As O’Shaughnessy reminds us in the film, she said: “Oh my boy, we are in trouble.” Ride replied: “We don’t have to be. We don’t have to do it. ” Then they kissed.

Ride would finally fly twice in space, going the second time in 1984, once again on board the shuttle Challenge. After this snake ship, came in tragic ruins, exploding 73 seconds in its last flight and claiming the lives of the seven crew members, Ride and Neil Armstrong, the commander of Apollo 11 and the first man on the Moon, sat on the commission which investigated the causes of the accident. Ride left NASA in 1987, accepting a scholarship in Stanford and later became a physics professor at the University of California in San Diego. In 1989, O’Shaughnessy moved west to live with her. It would not be before 2013, a year after the death of ride, that California would permanently legalize gay marriage, and it was not until 2015 that the Supreme Court would do the same nation. It was good with Ride, who, as with his relationship with his roommate, continued to believe that his love for O’Shaughnessy should remain a calm and relatively private thing. But it all started to change in 2011.

It was at the beginning of this year that Ride showed signs of illness for the first time – high appetite and yellowing cheeks. Her doctor diagnosed pancreatic cancer. “The doctor never said what scene. He never said the worst stage. We thought she was going to improve, and we tried everything,” recalls O’Shaughnessy. “She was doing acupuncture, we meditate, we have become vegans. And then one day, we are at the oncologist, and he said: “It’s time for the hospice”. And Sally and I were, like shocked. “”

Shortly before RIDE’s death, the couple worried about what O’Shaughnessy was not allowed to visit him in the hospital, to make intensive care decisions or to share goods because they were not married – and could not be in California. They therefore opted for the next best thing, registering as certified domestic partners, who gave them the necessary rights.

“It’s the worst sentence,” explains O’Shaughnessy. “We used to call ourselves certified domestic hens because it is such a bad term.”