A gay couple from the shopping-themed TV game show Supermarket Sweep is sharing their reaction after going viral.
X user Tom Zohar posted a screenshot of the show with two contestants named Tim Leach and Mark Dammann, in an episode from 1991, where they said that they were “business partners.” But Zohar suspected that they were a little closer than that.
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“I love watching old episodes of Supermarket Sweep because these two just said they’re ‘business partners’ who ‘design sets for plays’ and I’m like oh I’m sure,” Zahar said.
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The host asked them what’s the weirdest set they’ve been asked to design and their whole lives flashed before their eyes trying to come up with a heterosexual answer pic.twitter.com/exB4tuUsKe
— Tom Zohar (@TomZohar) July 28, 2024
Zahar’s post soon went viral, getting over 110,000 likes, and his follow-up post joking that “The host asked them what’s the weirdest set they’ve been asked to design and their whole lives flashed before their eyes trying to come up with a heterosexual answer” got 14,000 at the time of publication.
It even caught the attention of Leach, one of the contestants Zohar posted about. Leach responded on X, saying that he and Dammann were business partners who designed and sold sets for theater productions.
They have also been together for over 40 years.
IMPORTANT UPDATE pic.twitter.com/Gosz7tUy9e
— Tom Zohar (@TomZohar) July 30, 2024
“IMPORTANT UPDATE,” Zohar posted, with a picture of the two men under a Facebook comment.
“Just celebrated our 41st anniversary. Married in 2008 on our 25th anniversary as soon as it was legal in California. We ran a business together designing and painting backdrops and sets for 27 years,” Leach wrote.
Leach also wrote about the newfound fame on his Facebook page. “It has taken on a life of its own in the thread and comments. What a world!”
Supermarket Sweep ran for six years on Lifetime in the 1990s. Each episode involved three pairs of contestants with some kind of relationship—couples, parents/children, friends—pulled from the audience who had to answer trivia questions and then go on Mini-Sweeps and a Big Sweep, where they would run through the supermarket and take products from the shelves. It was based on a 1960s game show of the same name, and it has gotten attention in the past few years since Netflix uploaded some episodes.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Leach and Dammann did pretty well but ended up losing to a straight married couple.