Ross Mathews & Dr. Wellinthon Garcia-Mathews
Flamboyantly Famous!
PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDREA CERASO
Co-host and Producer since 2020 of The Drew Barrymore Show on CBS, and an Emmy Award-winning Producer and Judge since 2015 on RuPaul’s Drag Race on MTV… America first boyfriended Ross Mathews in December 2001, when he appeared as ‘Ross The Intern’ on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno…and thereupon found fame playing - himself - while covering events like the Academy Awards, two Winter Olympic Games, and various movie premieres for a run of fourteen years on The Tonight Show.
“I was born in 1979 and grew up in a little farm town called Mt. Vernon, in Washington state, just north of Seattle,” Ross starts right in. “I spent way too much time hanging with my Mom and doing things like unloading the dishwasher. I had an obsession with pop culture. My mom started buying me Oscar trivia books and I would memorize them and ask her to quiz me, and I became a walking Oscars encyclopedia. As a young kid, I could name every 1980s TV actor, and I yearned to meet the celebrities I read about in the magazines. I used to watch Regis and Kathy Lee with my Mom and I’d tell her, ‘I’m gonna do that one day!’. I just always knew that I’d be working in this world and that I wanted to be a talk show host… really ever since I was seven, I’ve said ‘That’s what I’m gonna do’, and it’s been like the North Star forever!”
“I remember when I was a kid, or like in high school, and other kids were doing, you know, bad stuff, I’d be like…better not…because if there’s a picture of it - well, one day I’m gonna be famous.
“…Eventually I did get to meet Regis - at the Vanity Fair party after the Oscars years later. I told him, “I’ve always wanted to meet you!”. He seemed shocked.
“You want to meet me? Well,” he said, putting out his hand to shake mine with a big smile, “I’m Regis Philbin. Great to meet you!”
“I went to University of Laverne to major in communications and live in L.A., and I got an internship at Leno while I was going to school,” Ross recounts. “Sure, I was working for free, but I worked really hard at learning everything I could from everyone I encountered - producers, writers, directors. On what was supposed to be my last day as an intern, George Clooney was the special guest, but a comic who was supposed to cover the premiere of Ocean’s 11 dropped-out at the last minute…and a writer on our show piped-up and said ‘Ross is funny!’
…They asked me to stand-in, and the first thing I asked was, ‘what do I wear?!’... I covered the premiere with George, and that happy accident really launched my career. Jay asked me to stay on and continue doing bits as ‘Ross The Intern’, and that became my schtick for 14 years.”
“Remember, this was before ‘Ellen’, and ‘Will and Grace’ was just beginning. It was a very different landscape than it is today,” Ross declares. “I was a very unapologetically gay person on late night TV. I knew the audience might laugh at me at first, but my job was to get them to laugh with me by the end of each segment. I worked hard to establish a kind of a relationship with America’s TV audience. To get them to be rooting for me by the end of the piece. Jay taught me to work hard, show up on time, and be nice to everyone. That advice has served me well for nearly 25 years on television!”
Indeed, Ross parlayed his 14 years on The Tonight Show into a talkshow of his own, on E!, called Hello Ross, and has established a long-standing career appearing on a variety of TV shows. Ross has co-hosted E! Live from the Red Carpet at pretty much every awards show from the Screen Actors Guild Awards, to the Emmy Awards, the Golden Globes, and the Academy Awards. He’s been a panelist and guest-host of Chelsea Lately, competed on CBS’s inaugural season of Celebrity Big Brother - where he was voted America’s Favorite Houseguest, and has appeared on CBS Morning, The View, and just about every other talk show…
And, he’s written three books!
Two memoirs: Man Up! Tales of My Delusional Self-Confidence and Name Drop: The Really Good Celebrity Stories I Usually Only Tell at Happy Hour, and a children’s book, Tío and Tío: The Ring Bearers, which Ross co-authored with his husband, Dr. Wellinthon Garcia-Mathews.
About The Drew Barrymore Show and his co-host Drew Barrymore, Ross says, “Drew is the absolute best. Initially, I wasn’t a part of the show. But about three weeks into her first season, a producer asked if I could pop onto the show and do a segment with Drew called ‘Drew’s News.’ I thought it was just a one off, but they asked me back the next day and the next day and the next… And then I just never left! I joined officially in season one on air and began producing the show with Drew and the team in season two. We’re in the middle of our sixth season now and the show has really taken off. Our show is all about everyone being welcome to be themselves, even for just an hour a day. We smile, we laugh, we cry - all the real stuff. It’s exactly as I always dreamed. And Drew has become like a sister to me.”
About RuPaul’s Drag Race, Ross boasts, “I love producing television. I like the structure and clarity of storytelling. And Drag Race is the show I wish existed when I was a kid. It’s bright and positive and funny! I spent so much time worrying about whether or not I was worthy before I ever got to be creative - and I think so many other kids were struggling the same way. You know, like ‘Do I Deserve It?’ And now kids today only know a world with Drag Race, and they get to skip the whole ‘Do I Deserve It?’ part and get right to being amazing from the get go! …The Emmy in 2023 was icing on the cake.”
“...But if you want the real inside story on me…well it’s all about Wellinthon!,” Ross announces. “I didn’t feel like I’d ‘made it’ until Wellinthon married me!”
“He’s not wrong!” Wellinthon quips. Pleased to play a supporting role when it comes to Ross’s career, there’s no mistaking that Wellinthon is nevertheless an equal partner when it comes to their relationship, and the way they relate to others.
“I was born in the Dominican Republic and we immigrated to the United States when I was five, not speaking any English,” Wellinthon explains. “I went to NYC public schools, and attended Martin Luther King, Jr., High School - where I also had an internship just across the street at Lincoln Center and first got turned-on by opera and ballet. I earned a full scholarship to Beloit College in Wisconsin and majored in Political Science and Sociology. I worked for a while as a policy and research analyst at a non-profit thinktank aiming to help with homelessness, but wasn’t satisfied with the lack of interaction with people and with what I was working on. …Then one day I was riding home on the subway and saw an ad that said ‘Do You Remember Your First Grade Teacher’...and I did! Or, actually, my second grade teacher, Mrs. Sanchez. …And it hit me that I wanted to be a teacher! …I was 25 and started to teach 1st Grade in Brooklyn while I went back to school at Brooklyn College to earn my Master’s in Teaching. Teaching was scary at first…it’s a real job, and I felt the pressure of people counting on me! Unless you’re a pilot of an airplane, you don’t understand. If you don’t teach a first grader to read, you are going to release a whole generation of illiterate and unqualified individuals! Seven years later, and then also licensed as a School Administrator, I became an Assistant Principal in Long Island and, a few years later was promoted to Director of Curriculum. Then, with the idea that I someday might want to go into higher education, I went back to school again, to earn my Doctorate in Education Policy and Leadership at Hofstra University. I ended up researching and publishing articles in peer-reviewed journals on leadership and identity and how both intersect.”
“In September, I took a new job as the Assistant Director of Leadership and Student Support Services for Putnam Northern Westchester BOCES, and I support school districts in developing school leaders and creating high school to university partnerships to benefit the students in our region.”
“And Ross and I are really having a great time promoting our new children’s book,” Wellinthon plugs. “Our first book, Tío and Tío: The Ring Bearers, features our nephews, and examines themes about finding who you are when you’re growing up and learning about responsibility and the importance of family. We think it’s a first, and fills a space - a universal story about family that also happens to include gay uncles. For me, writing and publishing a children’s book has been a dream come true.”
Explaining how the couple got together, Wellinthon offers, ”We met on January 4, 2020, on the rooftop of a hotel in Puerto Vallarta. I was having breakfast in the corner minding my own business, and Ross came over and introduced himself saying ‘Hi I’m Ross Mathews!’, using his first and last names, so I thought he was trying to harvest my organs or something…and I responded awkwardly saying ‘I’m Dr. Wellinthon Garcia’. I had absolutely no idea who he was! …By the time the weekend was over, I’d booked a flight to visit him in Los Angeles.”
“Then everything shut down for covid a little over a month later…and we really dated via zoom for about six months,” Ross takes up the narrative. “It got to the point where we would just be asking about each other’s day, and that was a nice way to start a relationship and build connection, really getting to know one another.
…When I started co-hosting with Drew, Wellinthon and I got an apartment together in New York City. We got engaged in 2021, when I surprised Wellinthon with a zoom call that included over 50 friends and family from all around the world. …And we got married - returning to the scene of the crime back in Puerto Vallarta! - in 2022. Drew was our flowergirl!”
PHOTO: CLANE GESSEL
“We came up to the Bedford area to visit a friend, and fell in love with the whole vibe…so we made it a mission to find a home here,” Ross continues. “We still have an apartment in Manhattan, but we’re up here whenever I’m not shooting in the City. It’s hard to get us to leave the house if it’s not to go looking for antiques, or shopping for vegetables at a local farmers market…We like mellow - we live like active senior citizens! But don’t get me wrong…we’re friendly! We like to be invited to the party!…and we’ll come over!…”
The couple own a Mid-Century Modern home built in 1973 by Mayers & Schiff, perched up on a hill, providing great vistas all around the house. The backyard is their personal retreat, and the inside is impressive and whimsical, formal and yet completely relaxed…the couple’s personality shines through in every room. The main volume of the home features a giant double-story glass wall overlooking the pool that connects the entry foyer, living and dining rooms, and the kitchen - with a balcony bridge on the second floor spanning the entire length. A nook underneath the staircase provides a private moment away from the openness of the rest of the living space where Ross sometimes stops for a drink or Wellinthgton reads a book. The home is quite unique, and has served as a canvas for Ross and Wellinthon to collect and create together. They’ve designed every room themselves, and most of the pieces are collected from estate sales, vintage shops, antique stores, or other online auctions that Ross and Wellinthon peruse on a regular basis.
Ross continues, “I couldn’t have been happier to have bumped into Marissa Winokur at the Bedford Post when we first moved into town! We were on Celebrity Big Brother together - she actually beat me out in the final two to win the whole thing! - and we became friends and, oddly, I remember her telling me her story back then about moving back into the house she grew up in in Bedford - but it hadn’t registered that she was talking about the Bedford area, and that we now had Marissa and her amazing husband Judah as neighbors. Marissa is absolutely hilarious…and she has the superpower of cutting right through the bullshit and being so real. …And then you did the Jan/Feb 2025 Cover Feature in Bedford & New Canaan Magazine on them, and getting on the B&NC Cover has been an obsession for us ever since! She can’t beat me on Big Brother AND get the cover, too!”
“I have to say, I’m honored by the recognition,” Ross adds. “I’ve been openly gay on national television for a quarter of a century. And I really hope by being visual in the mainstream, maybe I’ve helped some people in their own lives. Nothing weightier than that. We’re not radicals. The truth is you are who you are - and we’re not gay representatives. We’re just not scared to say who we are! And we’re advocates for human rights in general. …And, ultimately, the personal is political!”
“It’s all about the journey,” Ross concludes. “I grew up poor, I get to work on some extremely popular TV shows, I have the most fabulous husband, we’ve found a home here… I feel like I won the lottery and then some! …And I’m not done! I’d like to host a cooking show and produce it right out of our own kitchen at home. And I’d like to host a game show. The money contestants win can be life changing - I know it would have been for my family. And I’d like to play a part in changing people’s lives that way, and get to spread more joy and happiness.”
