TikTok grandsons go viral after lesbian grandmas recount their 1960s–70s lives

Los Angeles-based creator Corey Jacob posted a TikTok of a visit to his grandmothers' home. The two women, who have been a couple for nearly 50 years, sat with scrapbooks and told stories about their lives as lesbians in the 1960s and 1970s. The first clip surfaced over a weekend and surpassed two million views.

• One grandmother joked about dating "two and three women at the same time" and being a prolific partner. At one point she estimated she had "maybe thirty or so" girlfriends.
• The pair recalled a queer hairdresser who attended a party in drag and belonging to a lesbian motorcycle club they nicknamed the "12 lesbos" club.
• They spoke about annual trips to Provincetown and a dramatic incident involving a girlfriend who was a therapist named Karen and a confrontation on a trip to Arkansas.

Jacob explained these were his paternal grandmothers. One of them, whom he calls "the more butch one," had been married to a man and had his father when she was about 18 or 19. She later met Charity while babysitting his father, and the two entered an unofficial marriage when his father was around 11. The couple has remained together for almost five decades. Jacob said he'd grown up referring to Charity as "aunt" because their queer relationship had been kept hush-hush.

Commenters posted photos and stories of their own queer relatives. Many described feeling emotionally moved by seeing older queer people tell their histories, with one viewer writing, "They walked [so] that I could run. Forever grateful for the couples that helped pave the way." Another said seeing older queer people "heals my soul." The thread captured both nostalgia and gratitude for earlier generations who built community under conditions of legal and social risk.

What these clips show about queer life before legal recognition

The videos resonated because they combine intimate family history with broader queer social history, told by people who lived it. For younger viewers, the clips offer a lived link to past generations and a reminder of the informal, community-based ways queer people forged relationships and forms of commitment before legal recognition.