The Rocky Mountain News has a profile of a minister’s wife - Gayle Haggard, wife of Ted Haggard, former head of a mega church in Colorado and former president of The National Association of Evangelicals.

The 49 year old mother of five has always acquiesced to her husband’s wishes. College roommate, Carol McLeod.

McLeod said they became quick friends and have remained close over the past 30 years - so much so that Haggard e-mailed her several times after her husband’s misconduct surfaced.

At first, McLeod said she had a hard time reconciling the news with what she remembered about the couple in their college days.

McLeod said the 21-year- old Haggard drew her friend’s interest from the beginning, when she saw him at leadership meetings on campus.

Soon, they were dating, and McLeod said it was a short courtship.

They met in the winter of 1977, married in the summer of 1978, and Gayle Haggard didn’t even bother to graduate.

For McLeod, it was clear early on that Gayle was attracted to Haggard and that they’d get married.

“Ted’s a lot of fun. He’s a blast. He’s full of life, funny, down to earth, unpretentious and smart,” McLeod said. “I think those were the things that attracted . . . her. And Gayle believed her destiny was to support a man of God.”

After they were wed and Ted Haggard had graduated, the couple followed Oral Roberts University alumni Larry Stockstill to Baton Rouge, La., where Stockstill was taking over the Bethany World Prayer Center from his father, who was retiring.

The Haggards worked there for about five years in both the youth ministry and most other aspects of the church.

But Ted Haggard had no plans to stay. Instead, he told Gayle that God wanted him to start a new church in Colorado Springs. In her book, Gayle Haggard wrote that she “stopped in her tracks” when he told her that.

“I was shocked,” she wrote. “My first thoughts were, ‘We have big dreams here; we love working for this church; we’ve always thought if we ever left, it would be to go to someplace like Calcutta or Mexico City, but Colorado Springs!’ ”

Friends said that’s typical of Gayle Haggard. They said she always eventually supported her husband’s decisions because she believed they were guided by God’s hand.

Ted Haggard shocked the heck out of me when he spoke to a TV reporter with his wife and three of their kids in the car. The denial in and hubris of that act, along with the outright lying has stayed with me.  Gayle Haggard lives in a world that promotes reparative therapy at all costs, and will have to come to terms with the silence, shame and blame assigned spouses in many evangelical circles.  

Peterson Toscano asks, What about the spouse? My gay husband - A Spouse Speaks out.