“A Secret Love”: These Women Hid Their Relationship For Decades

The Netflix documentary chronicles the lives of two women who hid their relationship for more than 60 years.

Netflix
Netflix

Terry Donahue and Pat Henschel passed to most people as "friends" or "cousins" — but the two were actually in a relationship that they hid for more than 60 years.

The two Canadian-born women met in 1947 on a hockey rink in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, but spent a large part of their lives living together in Chicago. Donahue played in the All-American Girls Baseball League, which inspired the 1992 Penny Marshall film, "A League of Their Own." Until coming out to Donahue’s family in 2009, they lived as a secret couple. Between Donahue’s career in a burgeoning women’s sports league and the pair’s romance in an era that was unaccepting of LGBTQ+ individuals, both women led revolutionary lives.

After finally getting married in 2015, the couple moved to Alberta, Canada to live out the rest of their years as an out-and-proud couple. Though Henschel is still alive and living in Alberta, Donahue passed away in 2019 at the age of 93.

Directed by Donahue's great-nephew Chris Bolan, and produced by entertainment veterans Ryan Murphy and Jason Blum in partnership with NowThis News, the film "A Secret Love" poignantly chronicles the history of the couples’ relationship as well as the obstacles they faced along the way, concealing their love from a discriminatory society as well as their conservative families. "A Secret Love" is available to stream on Netflix on Wednesday, April 29.

Watch the trailer for the film about the extraordinary women below: