CHARLOTTE AMALIE – The first ever same-sex couple has tied the knot in the Virgin Islands after spending over four decades together.

Rick Weinstein, 68, and Tom Eggleston, 73, decided that they could not wait any longer to finally get married following the landmark Supreme Court ruling earlier this month.

The top U.S. court ruled that all couples, straight or gay, have a constitutional right to marry.

The couple got married in a private ceremony on July 8 – which pre-dates Gov. Kenneth Mapp’s executive order on marriage equality by one day. Mapp signed the order July 9.

Same-sex couples  had been told to wait until this week when Lt. Gov. Osbert Potter could co-sign the executive order on same-sex marriage.

“This thing about being the first same sex-couple marriage on the islands is purely accidental,” Weinstein said on Monday.

“We’ve been married for 44 years in our minds. It was – I can’t say it was a burning desire to have a marriage certificate, though I think both of us are very happy. We do call each other husband,” he told the Virgin Islands Daily News.

Weinstein said the SCOTUS ruling was simply the law catching up with society – he said people had accepted the couple for decades.