Born February 14: Kevyn Aucoin

The world's most famous makeup artist "married" his much younger boyfriend in an unofficial ceremony in Hawaii in July 2000 and after that Kevyn Aucion referred to Jeremy Antunes as his husband. In less than two years, the man who easily earned $10,000 a session doing makeup for superstar celebrities' magazine cover shoots or Oscar appearances, the author of three #1 New York Times bestsellers about beauty, the only makeup professional ever honored by the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and the founder of a new line of beauty products bearing his name, was dead at forty, without a will, and his husband was locked out of their two shared homes without any legal recourse. His estate went to his adoptive parents back in Louisiana who embody more than their share of contradictions: They are unsophisticated but full of heart; initially repelled by homosexuality, they started the first PFLAG chapter in Lafayette yet refuse to give their son in law even the bed he shared with Kevyn. It's possible that Kevyn and Jeremy were on the verge of breaking up, or merely experiencing a typical rough patch in what might have been a long marriage. Jeremy had left a sick and hurting Kevyn to go to Paris for a week alone, which sounds selfish and indulgent but could be seen as a tough love ultimatum to someone ruinously addicted to many kinds of pain killers and sleeping pills, who had in the preceding six months dropped out of two programs to overcome substance abuse, and who had screwed up his friend Cher's "Song for the Lonely" video shoot (needing to be hospitalized twice) so notoriously that not one star had asked him to do her makeup for the Oscars that spring. In any case, the trip was cut short by Kevin's final hospitalization. The pills were to relieve Kevyn's intense suffering from acromegaly, a pituitary gland disorder that causes excessive growth and had given him an ever enlarging brain tumor, undiagnosed since he was nine years old, at which time he had already discovered makeup. From childhood, his ambition for glamor and success was matched by his generosity of spirit. Two ex-boyfriends continued to work closely with him and even after he had achieved his own fame, he took enormous pleasure and considerable time to do makeup for shopgirls, neighbors, and even the homeless teenage drag queens of the Hetrick-Martin Institute, of which he was a vociferous supporter. Topping the wildly devoted praise by Cher, Janet, Tina, Tori, Gwyneth, Liza, Courtney, and Celine, Mary Tyler Moore said, "There were three men in my life I met who had the ability to make you feel like you were the only person in the world just by looking at you, just with their eyes: One was Sinatra, the other was the current pope, and the third was Kevyn." Despite his instructions that his ashes be scattered in Hawaii where he was married, Kevyn's parents are keeping his cremated remains in Louisiana because they like to visit him.

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Inspiring story there. What happened after? Good luck!