When the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to end the ban on same sex marriage this morning, Phyllis Wood called her girlfriend Rhiannan Pierce at her pizza job in Hixson.
They didn't have a plan but they waited until Pierce had a break, called family and picked up their 4-year-old daughter, Spring, and took her to the Hamilton County courthouse.
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"We are on our way...when I get back to work I will be a married woman to the woman I love and the family I cherish! #WeDidIt!" Pierce wrote to her friends on Facebook.
Pierce and Wood had been together for more than two years. Pierce had proposed to Wood but they didn't want to leave Tennessee to get married and then come home and not be recognized. But Wood also feared if something happened to her then Pierce wouldn't be considered Spring's parent. Their house too, was in Wood's name and Pierce wouldn't get to keep her house. Still they waited, hoping the country's highest court would make a decision in their favor.
At the courthouse, photographers and television cameras waited. In the morning the Hamilton County Clerk's office had told the public no one would be allowed to get married until the state attorney general spoke that afternoon. But at noon, faced with pressure from the County Technical Assistance Service, County Clerk Bill Knowles said anyone could get their marriage license.
For three hours, no one came. Then Pierce and Wood quietly came through the door and signed the paperwork.
"It's amazing, I've been in tears all day long," Wood said to a group of reporters crowded in the lobby. "Our daughter doesn't understand. I told her 'one day you'll understand and realize it was such a big day for us.'"
They then stepped outside on the courthouse lawn. Family members and strangers gathered to watch.
"I was just coming to pay my taxes," whispered one man. "But I couldn't miss this."
After they exchanged their vows, Spring ran and hugged Pierce and Wood's legs.
"Are you married yet?," she asked, looking up at her mothers.
They became the first gay couple in Hamilton County to be legally recognized.