Sylvia Green didnt care about the money. She just wanted to work for Ellen DeGeneres .

It was 1996 and Green had left a high-powered job in public relations to pursue a career in television writing. Shed found some work helping out with shows like The Nanny and Mad About You. But when she was offered the chance to join Ellen as a writers assistant in 1996, she couldnt resist.

Ellen, the sitcom, was at the time just a moderately successful TV show about a somewhat awkward 30-something bookstore owner. But Ellen, the woman, was Americas sweetheart. Greens bosses offered her a raise so shed stay at her current job, but she turned it down. She had already sacrificed a lot to pursue her dream of writing for television. In Ellen, Green thought she might have found what she was looking for.

She took the job.

A few days after she started, one of the producers assistants pulled her into a room, closed the door, and told her a secret: A month earlier, during lunch at her home in Los Angeles, DeGeneres had revealed to the shows writers and producers something that would change not only her life, but all of theirs, too. DeGeneres wanted to come out on the show.

No TV character even remotely as famous as Ellen Morgan, DeGeneres character on the show, had ever announced they were gay on primetime television before, and prejudice against the LGBTQ community was still rampant. That year, a Gallup poll found that 68 percent of Americans did not believe same-sex marriage should be legal a clear sign that even a widely loved woman couldnt come out on primetime television without risks.