NSFW WARNING: Some photos in this article may be Not Safe For Work… but worth it anyway.
When Gays With Kids first profiled father-of-three Hunter Bigham’s family in 2018, the gay dad community quickly noticed something familiar about Hunter’s husband, Johnny.
“I imagine it’s not actually him,” one Facebook user commented, “but the far left dude looks almost exactly like Tyler Saint in both face and body.”
“That was my first thought! Haha!” another follower replied.
When Hunter and Johnny’s family story was reposted in 2021, GWK’s followers again recognized the other dad to Hunter’s three children as famed adult film actor “Tyler Saint.”
“The husband looks familiar…” one GWK follower commented in 2021. “I don’t know [who he is,] he just looks familiar.”
As Hunter reveals on this week’s episode of Gays With Kids the Podcast, they were right.
His husband is, in fact, award-winning porn star Tyler Saint.
“It’s been an open secret in our family,” Hunter said on this week’s episode of GWK the Podcast. “[My children’s] mom made sure that the kids knew about his past immediately. As soon as I introduced the idea to them, and introduced him to them, she obviously did her research. It’s pretty easy to find.”
“His stage name is Tyler Saint.”
As Hunter explains on this week’s episode of GWK the Podcast, he met Johnny “Tyler Saint” on “some old gay website” around 2009. The two eventually met in person in Los Angeles in 2013, and they’ve been together ever since.
About a decade before he met his husband-to-be, Hunter was married to a woman with whom he had grown up in Mississippi, and they had three kids.
Around the time the internet became more readily accessible, Hunter started exploring his attraction to men, which he had struggled with since he was a child raised in the Southern Baptist church.
Riddled with guilt, Hunter told his then-wife about his months-long bout of infidelity. That kicked off a messy divorce and a difficult chapter of figuring out how to co-parent their three teens.
On GWK the Podcast, Hunter explained how he rejected his ex’s “demand” that he attend something akin to conversion therapy. Instead, he said he found a counseling program that guided him through his coming out process in a way that was right for him.
Now Hunter is happily married to Johnny, who he said is a great role model to his three young adult children.
Yes, the kids are aware of their step-dad’s profession. And yes, they very much know about their dads’ affinity for posting racy photos on social media.
“He was one of the most popular, most active actors for about ten years,” Hunter recounted on GWK the Podcast.
“International awards, Star of the Year [awards], he’s not just a dabbler!” he laughed. “I knew this was going to be a challenge … I knew this was going to be tough. I did a lot of counseling about it before we even got together, about how this would affect the kids.”
When Hunter first introduced his then-teenage kids to his then-boyfriend, they already knew what Johnny did. Despite the stigma of his chosen profession, all three simply said they liked Johnny straight away.
On top of their own instincts about him, Hunter said they also trusted their dad’s judgment that Johnny is a strong, resilient, and kind person.
As the husband of a famous gay porn star, Hunter was always aware that not everyone was accepting of Johnny’s job.
Like most sex work, Hunter said porn acting is highly stigmatized, despite it being a consensual, legal way to make a living that brings people joy. It is also a career not chosen lightly, and a lot of the time the people in the industry get judged harshly.
Defending his husband’s profession is nothing new for Hunter. But, as he told GWK host David Dodge, he gets emotional talking about what led Johnny to enter the adult film industry.
As a foster youth, Hunter said Johnny went through back-to-back awful situations, including being physically abused. And he did what he had to do to stay alive.
“My approach to this has always been; you can judge me for whatever you want, because I had basically the perfect upbringing,” Hunter said. “[Johnny] was a foster child, since he was born. He was removed from the only people he knew as his parents, by his father, when he was 6 years old, and he didn’t even know those people were not his parents… He had no support system. He didn’t deserve any of that. He had nothing, and he built this life, basically because he had to.”
For Hunter, it’s important that people see beyond the stigma of his husband’s career. Behind the title of “adult film star” and other taboo jobs are people with inspiring life stories, who have made something out of themselves when the world was stacked against them.
And that includes his husband, the other dad to his kids; Tyler Saint.
Hear Hunter tell his story in his own words on this week’s episode of GWK the Podcast, available below, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
