Parris McBride Biography

Parris McBride was a bohemian girl since she was very young and moved from place to place during her early youth to find her own place in the world. However, in the early 1980s, she decided to come back to Portland to live in a place surrounded by her friends. She took up the job of a waitress at a lesbian feminist restaurant called 'Old Wives’ Tales'. She was reportedly getting in troubles at the restaurant for playing politically incorrect music. After moving in with her future husband George R. R. Martin, she began working at a Sambo’s restaurant. She has accompanied her partner to numerous "adventures" at sci-fi and comic conventions, as well as road trips, since the early 1980s. However, she came to media attention after Martin gained popularity following the publication of 'A Song of Ice and Fire', and especially after he became a well-known celebrity thanks to the 'Game of Thrones' series.

Parris McBride was born in Portland, Oregon, where she spent most of her childhood and early youth. A self-professed hippy, she had written 'crazed hippie reaches quarter century' on the invitation cards for her 25th birthday. She moved out of her home city in her early 20s, but eventually returned there and settled. As a child, she was a huge fan of J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novel series 'The Lord of the Rings', and has been collecting memorabilia from the books and movies for over the past four decades.

Parris McBride first met her future husband, George R. R. Martin, at the Kublakhan in Nashville in 1975. She walked into the women's sauna, where Martin was enjoying a dip with a bunch of his friends. He was drawn to her immediately, and by the end of the day, the whole bunch was having wild 'chicken fights' in the pool. At the time, Martin was already in a relationship with Gale Burnick, whom he married later that year. McBride, according to Martin, was more interested in his friend Joe Haldeman. However, his relationship with Burnick ended in divorce in 1979, following which McBride and Martin got back in touch in 1981.

The relationship was initially a long distance one as McBride was in Portland, while Martin was living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he had moved in 1979 after resigning from his teaching job to become a fulltime writer. For a long time, both of them tried to convince the other one to move to his or her location. Martin had the last laugh as he had set up a "visit" for her at his home in Santa Fe which, he jokingly said, was designed to get her addicted to green chile and sopapillas. They have been together ever since she shifted to his old house on Declovina Street in Santa Fe in 1981.

Soon after moving in together, they adopted a cat named Mulligan, affectionately mentioned as their firstborn, in whose memory Martin later named a brother of the Night’s Watch in his novels. The two eventually decided to tie the knot in 2011, after dating for over three decades. The couple had a small wedding ceremony at their Santa Fe home on February 15th, following which they held a larger wedding ceremony and reception at Renovation, the '69th World Science Fiction Convention', in Reno, Nevada on August 19, 2011. They both made blog posts on February 17, 2011, to share the news of their marriage with the fans, and Martin joked in his post that after thirty years of being together, they could finally decide "that maybe this relationship was going to work out after all." Interestingly, Martin, who is known for killing off fan favorites, has said that he won't kill Arya Stark as Parris has made him promise so.