Old Gays

Robert Reeves grew up attending a rural Southern Baptist church.[5] He worked as a city planner. While living in San Francisco, he was diagnosed with HIV in 1987.[5] He moved to Cathedral City, California, in the 1990s.[6]

Bill Lyons grew up in southern California. He moved to the Bay Area in 1965, staying there until the late 1990s.[6] Reeves met Lyons in San Francisco in the 1980s.[7] The two later reconnected in 2005.[7]

Michael Peterson grew up in rural Texas in a Christian family.[8] He has lived in both San Francisco and Los Angeles, and is a former bodybuilder.[6] He first attended a pride event in West Hollywood in 1979.[8] He became friends with Lyons and Reeves after renting a room from them in 2013.[7]

Jessay Martin grew up in a religious family in Tennessee.[6] His father died in 1971.[7] He worked as a musician and singer, and at one point moved to Los Angeles.[6] He first attended a pride event in 1982 in West Hollywood.[8] Martin moved in across the street from the other three in 2015.[9]

Joc Anderson is a psychologist from nearby Rancho Mirage, specializing in addictive personality disorders. He first appeared in a video dancing to Shania Twain's Man! I Feel Like a Woman! alongside Twain, Lyons, Martin and Justin Fuko on June 30, 2023 before officially joining the group the following August, initially to fill in for Reeves, who had been hospitalized with a urinary tract infection. [10]

Lyons, Martin, Reeves and Peterson first began to gain a following in 2018 after a promotional video for Grindr.[11] They gained more followers in March 2021, when their TikToks began going viral.[5] As of November 2021, they have one billion followers across social media platforms.[12][13][14] The group resides in Cathedral City, California, with Reeves, Peterson, and Lyons sharing a house and Martin living across the street.[15]

Peterson has an autoimmune disorder.[5]