Quirky Details About Sen. Mark Kelly's Wedding To Gabrielle Giffords

The relationship between Senator Mark Kelly and his wife, Gabby Giffords, has never been by the numbers. The two met in China at an event organized by the the National Committee in 2003 and became friends. However, Giffords, who was an Arizona state senator at the time, was in a relationship, and Kelly was married. Over the next year, Kelly would get divorced and they would each date various people, and Giffords would even give the astronaut dating advice. Finally, with both of them single, Giffords asked Kelly out, but it wasn't a normal date: She invited him to join her on a prison tour. Their love grew from there, with Kelly joining Giffords on the campaign trail as she ran a successful campaign to be elected to the U.S. Congress, and Giffords was there to watch Kelly launch the Discovery shuttle in 2006.

Matching their unconventional courtship, the wedding of Giffords and Kelly was nothing short of quirky. The couple married on November 10, 2007 at Agua Linda, an organic produce farm in Tucson, Arizona. Giffords, a member of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees at the time, had just returned from Iraq, and Kelly took time off from training for a shuttle mission. The ceremony was eco-friendly, with forks and plates made of biodegradable sugar cane. Everything else was reusable, and that included Giffords' dress, a Vera Wang that she borrowed from a friend. The ceremony was overseen by a rabbi, with a mariachi band performing, making for a memorable night.

As the ceremony came to a close, Mark Kelly's shuttle crew created a traditional military arch, with their sabers held high above as the newly wedded couple walked through. And then, instead of taking off for their honeymoon, Kelly and Gabby Giffords went back to work. Giffords returned to Washington, D.C., to continue her work in the House of Representatives, and Kelly had to get back to Houston to prepare for his first NASA mission as a commander. For the first four years, Kelly and Giffords' marriage was done via long distance. That all changed on January 8, 2011 when Gabby Giffords was shot in the head while meeting with constituents in a supermarket parking lot. 

The shooter then opened fire on the crowd, killing six and wounding 12 others. Giffords survived, and while the road to recovery has not been easy, Mark Kelly has been with her every step of the way. Kelly left NASA and retired from the Navy in October 2011 so that he could stay on the planet and be there for his wife, Gabby Giffords. Giffords continued to represent Arizona until 2012. In 2013, the couple started the nonprofit organization Americans for Responsible Solutions, with a goal to find ways to reduce the amount of gun violence in America. The couple never left the public eye, but made a return to politics in 2020 when Giffords gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention, and Kelly was elected to the U.S. Senate.