Judas Priest’s Rob Halford Privately Got Married ‘Year or So Ago’

Judas Priest lead vocalist Rob Halford revealed he privately married with his longtime partner, Thomas, over a year ago.

While speaking with Scissor Sisters‘ Jake Shears on an episode of the Queer the Music podcast released on Tuesday, Sept. 23, Halford, 74, confirmed he and Thomas tied the knot in a “simple” but “beautiful” ceremony after dating for over 30 years.

Halford suggested it took them that long to say their “I dos” due to Thomas’ “extremely conservative” background. “We got married by the cactus outside on December the something or other, about a year or so ago,” the singer shared.

Halford admitted, “I stopped asking, ‘Let’s get married.’ ‘No, I don’t want to get married.’ ‘Oh, let’s just get married. We’ve been together forever.’ ‘No, I don’t want to get married.’ ”

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“And then suddenly on one of our night walks, he goes, ‘I think we should get married.’ [I went] straight home [and got] on the phone to get a pastor,” the heavy metal musician continued.

Halford said, “It was a very simple ceremony, obviously me and him, and an officiant, as they call them, who are legalized to marry people. Two of my dearest friends, Jim Silvia, who was Priest’s manager forever, [and] his wife.”

“There were just four of us around the pool, around the cactus, the heavy metal cactus,” he told Shears, 46. “And it was over in an instant. But it was just a beautiful, simple ceremony.”

The Confess author insisted that it was a “nice thing” to have tied the knot, sharing, “It seems like you’ve completed something in your relationship. More than anything else, the commitment goes to another level when you get married. It’s a great thing to do. And if it doesn’t work, that’s life.”

“But, I think after being together for 35 years, it’s working,” he said.

Halford came out as gay on MTV in 1998. In a 2024 interview with NME, he was asked whether coming out was a pivotal moment in his career. In response, he said, “If I reflect on it, it happened in the right way because it wasn’t premeditated. It was simply me talking like I’m talking to you.”

“I just said: ‘Speaking as a gay man, blah blah blah.’ And those simple words resonated and went to a lot of places. As I went back to the hotel afterwards, I thought, ‘That’s it now. Everybody knows I’m a gay guy,’ ” he explained.

“Everybody in the band knew I was gay, everybody at the label knew I was gay and management knew I was gay. And wouldn’t you believe it? All the fans were like, ‘Well, we always thought you were gay anyway.’ And there was me thinking I’m the only gay in the village!” the rocker went on.

“But the goodness that came out of that can’t be overstated. This is a guy from a world-famous, top-shelf heavy metal band from the U.K. called Judas Priest, and the singer’s a gay guy [who’s] openly out,” the singer added to the outlet.

“[But] being a gay man and coming out into a metal world, at the time, that was really difficult because of the homophobia and the pushback,” Halford shared, admitting to the outlet that there were instances where he would “still get” the abuse.

Halford had previously opened up to PEOPLE about his experience as a gay frontman of a metal band back in 2020. “Here I was in this super macho, alpha male experience,” he said. “It was very difficult for me in front of thousands of people in the work that I do. It didn’t really affect my work, per se, until the addiction started to really take hold. That’s when I started to suffer.”

The rocker also spoke about a near-overdose experience that led him to decide to be completely sober. “By the mid-’80s, I was on the rock n’ roll train to hell,” Halford shared at the time. “Thank God the brakes were put on at the right time.”