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From the New York Times and WBUR Boston, this is Modern Love.

Stories of Love, Laws, and Redemption.

I'm your host, Megna Chacrabardi.

When Liza Mnroy decided to get married in her early 20s to a man who could never be with her completely, she didn't care.

Her husband needed her in ways only she could provide.

Maul and Ackerman, of the Showtime series Billions, reads us Liza's essay, Elvis and my husband, have left the building.

My ex-husband is gay, and I knew it when I married him.

We were only 23 at the start of our promising careers, but he, Alas, was at the end of his student visa.

So I married Ricky to keep him from being sent back to his gay and tolerant Muslim homeland, where he'd have to live a life of lies, secrecy and fear.

I acted out of love. No compensation requested or received.

We simply got in the car, drove northeast out of Los Angeles, and five hours later, Alas was singing, I'm in love, I'm all shook up.

As we danced down the aisle of the Little White Wedding Chapel, me in a hot pink slip dress, and my groom and his brown leather jacket, rib cream turtleneck and khakis.

When we reached the altar, the Alas and Personators stopped his hip swinging jig.

Do you promise to polish each other's blue-sweighed shoes?

I beamed at my own worst husband. I do.

Do you promise to walk each other's hound dogs? Of course, Ricky said.

I'm more of a cat person, I replied. But sure.

It was over in five minutes, but nobody could say our love wasn't genuine.

It might have been more genuine, of course, if Ricky had been standing next to the preferred love of his life.

A man. But a man wouldn't have been able to help him the way his best girlfriend could.

I first noticed Ricky four years earlier in college.

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