This past Sunday at the 59th Annual Drama Desk Awards, when Neil Patrick Harris accepted his Outstanding Actor in a Musical award for playing Hedwig in the high-voltage Broadway musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, he offered a moving tribute to his fiancé David Burtka.
"We've been together for over 10 years," said Harris. "When we first met I was doing Cabaret and he was doing Tulsa in Gypsy. We were both doing shows at the same time and my path has led us mostly to Los Angeles and sort of uprooted him from what he had been doing. So thank you for your love and your patience and your sacrifice and I can't wait for the opportunity soon that these roles get to be reversed and I get cheer you on up here doing what you do so well." (Harris, Burtka, and their twins, Gideon and Harper, are relocating to New York City in part so Burtka can do theater again.)
In fact, there are many couples working in the theater these days cheering each other on. Actress Celia Keenan-Bolger, who won a Drama Desk Award for playing Laura in The Glass Menagerie, has been married to actor John Ellison Conlee since 2010. The week before Keenan-Bolger won the Drama Desk Award, Conlee won an Obie Award for The (Curious Case of the) Watson Intelligence and she was his plus one for that event. "For a long time I thought ugh, never ever marry an actor," said Keenan-Bolger. "And now I cannot imagine not being married to one. My husband is a super-evolved, lovely supportive human being. I always want him to come early in previews and give me notes because he's so smart."
Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater are now co-staring as lovers Beatrice and Benedick in Shakespeare in the Park. "She's so tall that that when they look for someone to play opposite her, it's basically my height," Linklater jokes. But seriously, when they're onstage together their chemistry is electric.
Read about more favorite theater couples at this story in Parade.
(All photos used with permission. Photo credit: David Gordon/Theatermania.com)
Celia Keenan-Bolger and John Ellison Conleee at the Drama Desk Awards. "If I was married to an economist and won a Drama Desk Award they might say, 'what's that again?'" jokes Keenan-Bolger. 
Orfeh and Andy Karl at the Drama Desk Awards. "We support each other in every possible way we can," says Orfeh.
Celia Keenan-Bolger with her Drama Desk Award 