Although same-sex couples have existed throughout recorded history, the first legally recognized same-sex marriages in modern times have only occurred since the beginning of the 21st century. The Netherlands was the first country to enact marriage equality in 2001, and since then, 15 other countries have done the same, including Spain, Canada, Sweden, Brazil, France, and New Zealand.

In the United States, same-sex couples can now legally marry in 19 states and the District of Columbia, and every state in the union either has marriage equality or a pending legal challenge to their ban. We’ve come a long way since 2004, just ten years ago, when Massachusetts became the first state to recognize same-sex marriage by state supreme court ruling.

Of all the states, California has been the most contested battleground for marriage equality. San Francisco led the charge in 2004 when the mayor instructed city officials to begin issuing same-sex marriage licenses, citing the state constitution’s equal protection clause. For one month between February and March, 4,000 couples came from all over to get married in San Francisco, but in March, the Supreme Court of California halted the marriages and voided those that had already been granted. San Francisco’s challenge to the underlying ban on the marriage of same-sex couples was eventually combined with others from around the state, and in 2008, the California Supreme Court ruled that marriage equality was indeed guaranteed by the state constitution. On June 16, 2008, all of California began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Unfortunately, trouble was once again just around the corner. In 2008, opponents of marriage equality finally succeeded in getting a measure on the state ballot that would strip same-sex couples of their newly recognized right to marry by amending the California state constitution. Thanks to truckloads of out-of-state money, much of it from the Mormon and Catholic churches, that measure, called Proposition 8, passed with 52% of the vote, in the same election in which Barack Obama was first elected President. After only five months, same-sex marriage was once again on hold in California, although the state continued to recognize the marriages of same-sex couples that occurred between the Supreme Court’s decision striking down the ban on same-sex marriage and the passage of Proposition 8.

The next year, in 2009, David Boies and Ted Olson (the two lawyers famous for opposing each other in the Bush v. Gore case that decided the 2000 presidential election) jointly filed a challenge to Proposition 8 in federal court on behalf of two same-sex couples. In August of 2010, the federal district court ruled that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional, but the ruling was stayed for appeals. Both governor Jerry Brown and state attorney general Kamala Harris declined to appeal the case, stating that the law was indefensible. However, the proponents of Proposition 8 (funded by the National Organization for Marriage) controversially appealed the decision in their place, and the case eventually made it to the US Supreme Court as Hollingsworth v. Perry in 2012. At that point, same-sex marriage had been on hold in California for almost four years.

At the federal level, congress had passed the so-called Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, which prevented the federal government from recognizing any legal marriage other than one between a man and a woman. In 2010, a lawsuit was filed in federal court by Edith Windsor, who was legally married to her wife Thea Spyer and then denied the estate tax benefits that married couples receive when Thea passed away. That case was decided in favor of the plaintiffs and appealed to the US Supreme Court in 2012 as United States v. Windsor.

Luckily for us, there’s a happy ending. On June 26, 2013, almost five years after the right to marry was stripped from same-sex couples in California, the US Supreme Court issued two landmark rulings for marriage equality on the same day. First, in the case of Proposition 8 in California, the Supreme Court ruled that the surrogate defendants of the law did not have standing to appeal, and the original decision from the federal district court became the law of the land, effectively reinstating marriage equality in California. Second, in the case of DOMA, the US Supreme Court ruled that the section preventing the federal government from recognizing legal same-sex marriages was unconstitutional, enabling the federal government to begin recognizing same-sex marriages from all of the states that grant them.

We both remember that day well, because we were there to witness history. When we got wind of the decisions, we both left work and hurried to San Francisco City Hall, where we were able to witness Kamala Harris preside over the marriage of Kristin Perry and Sandra Stier, two of the plaintiffs in the Proposition 8 case. They were followed by a flood of other overjoyed same-sex couples, in town for the San Francisco Pride festivities that weekend. Every corner of City Hall was filled with an endless stream of marriage ceremonies. We were so fortunate to be there to see history in the making, just as we’re fortunate to be able to enjoy full legal recognition of our marriage now thanks to the countless hours of hard work and struggle from those who came before us.