Who Is Tan France's Husband? All About Rob France
'Queer Eye' star Tan France quickly bonded with his husband over their similarities
Tan France still has a crush on his husband Rob France.
The couple married in 2007 and grew their family 14 years later with the birth of their first child, Ismail, in 2021. Tan and Rob then welcomed their second son, Isaac, in 2023.
After Tan shot to fame on the 2018 reboot of Queer Eye, the fashion designer talked about his deep affection for his husband. During a 2019 appearance on NPR's Fresh Air to promote his memoir Naturally Tan, the author opened up about meeting and falling in love with Rob. Describing his marriage as “blissful,” he added, “I could write ten books about how much I love my husband.”
Tan reiterated these feelings in an interview with The Guardian the same year, explaining that his relationship was never “hard work.”
“It was the constant, the easiest thing in my life,” he said. “I still have the biggest crush on him. Every time I see him, I get this feeling like I can’t believe he’s mine.”
So who is Tan France's husband? Here is everything to know about Rob France and his relationship with the fashion stylist.
He’s from Wyoming
In a 2015 interview with Salt Lake City Weekly, Rob shared that he's originally from a small town in Wyoming and moved to Salt Lake City for college. At the time, he had been a resident of the area for "close to a decade."
“I stayed for the mountains and the attractive people,” Rob joked to the outlet.
Although Tan and Rob now live in Salt Lake City together, Tan was drawn to the state years before meeting Rob.
Speaking to The Salt Lake Tribune in 2018, Tan revealed he first visited Utah in the early 2000s with a friend who was a native. He enjoyed that Salt Lakers “are some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. And I can see the mountains from this restaurant, and that’s beautiful.’ ”
Afterward, the Queer Eye star continued flying out to Utah every three or four months until he met Rob and decided to make it his permanent home in the long run. “We started to date and then, yeah, I realized he was the one very shortly after that. So I planned on Utah being my home," Tan explained.
He’s an illustrator and former nurse
Like Tan, Rob has a creative career — while his husband works in fashion, Rob is a freelance illustrator. According to his website, Rob is self-taught and specializes in “figure illustrations and the occasional abstract portrait.”
“I pour my heart and soul into each piece, infusing emotion into each piece ... which is the main reason I don’t produce prints or replicas,” his bio reads. “Each piece is sold as a unique, exclusive original.”
Before completely dedicating himself to art, Rob was a full-time pediatric nurse. In 2015, he told Salt Lake City Weekly he "absolutely" loved his job. Rob also shared that he was "passionate about women's fashion" and "horror/sci-fi films," both of which come through in his artwork.
They met on a dating app and bonded over their similar lifestyles
In a 2018 interview with the New York Post, Tan said that the couple met on a dating website. Their relationship was long-distance initially, as Tan lived in England and Rob lived in Utah. Despite many differences in their upbringings, they found that they had a lot in common — specifically, they didn't drink alcohol.
“It made it easier to date somebody who had similarities to me,” Tan said. “I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t smoke.”
During his 2019 appearance on Fresh Air, he added that he hadn’t known it was possible to find someone like Rob and the pair have their own kind of fun.
"We frequent Vegas, which is funny because neither of us drink, smoke, dance or gamble. But we love Vegas. The weather is real nice, and it's nice and close," he shared on NPR's Fresh Air.
Tan and Rob's wedding was low-key
Rob and Tan wed in London in 2007 and again in the United States after the Defense of Marriage Act was overturned in 2013.
In episode 2 of Queer Eye's first season, Tan revealed that he and Rob just decided one day that they wanted to get married — no one proposed.
“It was just a case of, ‘you know we’re going to get married one day, right?’ ” he said. “We had just agreed that it was going to happen ... and we arranged the date.”
In his 2019 memoir Naturally Tan, the television personality wrote that they were “broke as a joke” when they wed. While in London, they put on suits and went down to town hall to tie the knot with three close friends as witnesses.
“It was exactly what we wanted it to be,” he wrote. “It wasn’t about a wedding, it wasn’t about a party. It was about us.”
They share two kids
Tan and Rob are the proud parents of two children. In July 2021, the couple welcomed their first son, Ismail France, via surrogate.
A month prior, Tan told PEOPLE about their decision to start a family. “Surrogacy was the right choice for us,” he said. “We wanted to have a donor who we felt was a perfect match for what we wanted our child to be, and what we want for our future and their future.”
In April 2023, the pair announced they were expecting their second child via surrogate. Tan and Rob shared the news exclusively with PEOPLE and said they were excited about their surrogate becoming pregnant. “We were over the moon. It was the best feeling ever," Tan said.
In May 2023, they welcomed their second son, Isaac France. Two years earlier, Tan had told Lily Singh that he knew the names he wanted for his kids since he was a teenager.
“I’ve always known,” he said. “When I met my husband on one of the very first dates, I said, ‘Do you want kids?’ And he was like ‘Yeah one day I do’ and I was like, ‘I also know what I want to call my children.’ ”
There’s a good chance that more kids will be on the way eventually. In 2021, Tan told PEOPLE that although he originally wanted six kids, his desires had changed. "I still want a minimum of three or four," he said.
He encouraged Tan to do Queer Eye
Tan has talked about how he was initially hesitant to join the Queer Eye cast, telling The Salt Lake Tribune that he was ready to retire, settle down and start a family when Netflix approached him.
“I wanted to start the surrogacy process,” Tan told the outlet. “I just wanted to live a quiet life. I have a home that I’m in love with in Salt Lake, and that was all I wanted. I just wanted to give it all up and focus on family life. And then this happens."
However, Rob was the one who encouraged him to go to the audition, Tan told The Guardian. “My husband said, ‘You’ve been moaning for years and years that you have no gay friends. There’s going to be a room of gay men and you’re the most sociable person I know: just go.’ ”
With that, Tan flew out to Los Angeles as a finalist and instantly clicked with Jonathan Van Ness, Antoni Porowski, Bobby Berk and Karamo Brown — all of whom became the latest rendition of the "Fab Five."
Since then, Tan has shared how Rob continues to support him in everything he does. "Every day, he just tells me how much he loves me and I do the same for him," he told PEOPLE NOW in 2020.
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