Was Sally Ride married? All about America’s first female astronaut, as a documentary reveals her life story
A documentary based on the life of late American astronaut and physicist Sally Ride is all set to release on National Geographic on June 16, 2025. Titled Sally, it revolves around Ride’s career at NASA to become the country’s first woman in space in 1983. It also covers her three-decades-long romance with partner and retired tennis star, Tam O’Shaughnessy.
Before her relationship with O’Shaughnessy, Sally Ride was married to fellow NASA astronaut and retired astronomer Steven Hawley from 1982 to 1987.
Now, in the wake of the documentary’s release, Tam O’Shaughnessy, 73, sat down with PEOPLE for an exclusive interview published on June 15, 2025, with the headline, “Astronaut Sally Ride Gave Life Partner Permission to Reveal Their 27-Year Romance 10 Days Before Dying.”
“Ten days before she died, I asked her how I should be to the public. I was holding sort of a public celebration of her life, and then a national tribute at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. And it was like, ‘So who am I?’” Tam recalled asking Sally.
O’Shaughnessy continued that before she died in 2012, Ride gave her the go-ahead to go public with their 27-year-old romance.
“Our friends and family knew, and people guessed. It didn’t feel honest. She told me, ‘You decide what you want to say, how open you want to be about our relationship.’”
Sally Ride passed away in July 2012 in La Jolla, California, at the age of 61, after a 17-month-long battle with pancreatic cancer.
All you need to know about Sally Ride
Sally Ride was born in Los Angeles, California, in May 1951 and raised in Encino with her sister, Bear Ride. They had Norwegian roots. Sally is best known as the first American woman to reach space in 1983 and the third overall, after Soviet Russia’s Valentina Tereshkova and Svetlana Savitskaya. Ride also became the youngest American to fly in space at the age of 32.
She joined NASA’s Astronaut Group 8 in 1978 as a mission specialist astronaut after earning her doctorate in physics on the topic of the interaction of X-rays with the interstellar medium from Stanford University.
Ride trained for a year and later served as the ground-based capsule communicator for the USA’s second and third space shuttles. Later, she also contributed to making the flight’s robotic arm.
In June 1983, Sally traveled to space and back on the Challenger aircraft as part of the STS-7 mission. A year later, she made the same spaceflight for the STS-41 G mission.
Before retiring from NASA in August 1987, Ride had completed over 343 hours in space.
Following this, Sally Ride joined Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control for two years, before continuing her research on nonlinear optics and Thomson scattering at universities in California and San Diego.
The late astronaut-physicist was also part of the presidential commissions that investigated the disasters surrounding the Challenger (1986) and the Columbia (2003) fatal space shuttles.
From 1982 to 1987, Sally Ride was married to her NASA colleague Steven Hawley. Following Sally’s demise in July 2012, Hawley shared a statement with Space News.
“Sally was a very private person who found herself a very public persona. It was a role in which she was never fully comfortable. I was privileged to be a part of her life and be in a position to support her as she became the first American woman to fly in space,” Steven noted.
The Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, continued by saying that his ex-wife didn’t enjoy being a celebrity but acknowledged the opportunities it gave her to “encourage children, particularly young girls, to reach their full potential.”
“Sally Ride, the astronaut and the person, allowed many young girls across the world to believe they could achieve anything if they studied and worked hard. I think she would be pleased with that legacy,” Hawley added.
Sally shared a long-term relationship with the Women’s Tennis Association’s former star, Tam O’Shaughnessy, from 1985 until she died in 2012. Together, Ride and O’Shaughnessy founded the educational venture Sally Ride Science in the early 2000s.
Tam is the company’s chief operating officer and executive vice president.
Sally was posthumously honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.
More about Tam O’Shaughnessy’s revelation about Sally Ride in the latest documentary
In the recent documentary, Sally, Tam O’Shaughnessy shared that she and Ride were not only life partners but also business partners, co-authors, speakers, and more.
Tam remembered Sally as a private person and how they had only a few pictures together.
The documentary, directed by Cristina Costantini, also mentions how the duo were childhood friends turned lovers.
Constantini shared that the documentary was “all inspired directly from Tam’s memory” and gave it a “changed” perspective.
Likewise, producer Lauren Cioffi added that Tam acted as “the closest and most intimate voice that we could get to Sally.” Meanwhile, Sally Ride’s partner told PEOPLE that she hoped the new project helped the world see the late astronaut-physicist “as who she really was.”
“We had a wonderful relationship from the time we were kids until we became lovers. I think it's something to be proud of.”
She also mentioned that filming the documentary led her to “break down” in parts, especially when she described her romance with Sally or when she got “sick.”
“I got teary-eyed, and it just got me all the way through to my heart and guts. And that was a little bit of a surprise,” O’Shaughnessy added.
Sally will stream on Disney+ from June 17, 2025. It premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival in January this year.
