Call this a case of permissive joinder.
Priscilla Owen and Nathan Hecht are getting married.
Hecht, chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, and Owen, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, became engaged last summer and their wedding is set for Palm Sunday in Austin.
Court officials say it is the first time in U.S. history when a chief judge of a federal appeals court and a state supreme court chief justice have married. For Chief Justice Hecht, 72, it’s his first marriage. His fiancée, 67, has been married before.
“We’ve been friends and close for a long time, since she joined the [Texas Supreme] Court in 1995 and we just decided to do it,” Chief Justice Hecht told The Texas Lawbook. “We were together last summer and we had our dogs with us and they seemed agreeable.”
One dog was between them on the back porch of a house they were building when, as she tells it, he dropped to one knee and proposed. “It was very touching,” the chief federal appeals court judge said.
Changing her name to her maiden name, Chief Judge Owen now goes by Priscilla Richman.
“Looking down the road for two and a half years both of us could answer to Chief Hecht,” she said. And beyond that, “Too much Judge Hecht.”
Chief Justice Hecht said a small group of family and friends have been invited to attend.
Covid considerations framed the when of the coming marriage, especially for her 91-year-old aunt, who told her, “I’m taking your mother’s place.” Her mother died in 2020.
And her response to Nathan Hecht on his knee, a dog beside him probably wondering what was going on?
“I said yes.”