TLC Stars Jay & Pamela Talk their Sex Life, Growing Up Queer & Championing Disability Representation

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Jay & Pamela

Jay and Pamela are the couple the television landscape has always desperately needed!

Jay is an autistic Black, transgender man who works as a music producer famously known by his tag name, “Mini Producer”. Pamela is a pansexual, first-generation Mexican-American who works for corporate America. Both were born with Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI) Type 3, a rare, inherited brittle bone disorder that leads to fragile bones due to diminished or improperly formed collagen.

Their show Jay & Pamela, which premiered on TLC on March 4, 2025, could have easily centered solely on their diagnosis, reducing them to their medical condition, however it breaks that mold and establishes itself as a timely, multidimensional program.

At its core, Jay & Pamela follows a young couple navigating life’s big moments—from stressful apartment hunts and driving lessons to planning their dream wedding. These are universal life experiences that resonate with all audiences whether disabled or able-bodied. It’s this relatability that makes the show so impactful. People can relate to Jay & Pamela—period!

While who they are and the challenges they face are undoubtedly significant parts of their lives, their queerness and disabilities do not diminish their humanity nor completely define them. 

Gaye Magazine had the opportunity to sit down with the show’s namesake stars, Jay and Pamela, to discuss their experience leading a national series, their coming out journeys, the importance of normalizing sex as people with disabilities, and so much more. 

Editor's Note: Portions of the conversation may have been edited slightly to improve clarity, flow, and readability. You may watch the full interview here.

How did the both of you get your own show and what made you want to do the show? 

Jay:

“Someone in the music industry reached out to me through Instagram. I always laugh because I’m glad I got that DM. Pamela would have thought it was a scam and she would have deleted it and told me after, so I’m very happy that it went to me. We had just corresponded back and forth in the DMs and he ended up connecting us with a production company, the one that we work with now.”

“As time went on, it led to us being able to have a show, which is so wild because the process takes a minute. However once we got to that moment of TLC greenlighting the series, it was like, 'wow we're really here'. Also, it really was about the representation. I always hear the saying of ‘if not me, then who?’”

“There really hasn't been any shows that have all of the intersectionality that Pamela and I have being presented. We just felt like the reasons to do the show outweighed the reasons to not do it. And now we're here.” 

So Pamela, what were your reactions when you found out that both of you were going to be on a show?

Pamela: 

“Well, once it was a final yes with TLC, it was an honor and a privilege because not many people get to have a platform and share their story. It’s been a beautiful process. From the people that we worked with while filming to the production company that we started with. Everyone has been just so passionate about this show since day one. And that helps us and encourages us to just be unapologetically ourselves.”

How did the two of you meet? 

Pamela: 

“We were already Facebook friends, but we weren't really talking. When you have our bone condition, it is very rare, so there's not a lot of us and you just randomly add people that have the same condition as you. Because Jay is a music producer and already had his own following, his Instagram live popped up on my timeline. Jay and his friend had a music review show that they would do weekly.” 

“I commented and Jay said, ‘I'll send you a message’, but I didn't think much of it. And he really did send me a message! I just thought he was going to say hello instead. He immediately gave me his phone number and we just started texting. Then, the first phone call we had was two hours long. It felt like we were friends in some other lifetime and it just turned into a friendship, which turned into a romantic relationship.”

Jay: 

“It's funny because I feel like for people that know me, that's actually outside of my element. So I don't know what was going on that day. I suppose I just felt a good amount of courage, I guess, at that point in time. Typically, that's not something I would ever do. So I guess I just felt at that moment like this is the right decision to go with and I did it. And I'm glad that I did because it worked out, which was a surprise to me to be honest.”

From that fateful DM, a budding relationship began to blossom. They talked often, sometimes for hours on end. Jay even flew from his modest hometown of Canton, Georgia to Kansas City, Missouri and was able to visit Pamela twice.

As things were going steady between the new couple…the pandemic hit. Unsure of when the two would see each other again, Jay’s parents, Rene and Raphael, who are prominently featured on the show, rented a van to bring Pamela to Georgia to be with Jay, just temporarily. But for Pamela, what was meant to be a short visit later evolved into something more permanent. 

“I finally graduated from college in 2020, so at that time, we were thinking, do we have to wait another year to see each other or what’s our relationship going to look like? So Jay’s parents rented a van that could make a whole road trip with the both of us and brought me to Georgia,” began Pamela.

“That vacation stay and meeting the family turned into living here. We did measure the pros and cons of Jay moving to Missouri or me moving to Georgia, and it just felt more natural and a lot more sense of me moving to Georgia."

Pamela continued, “It was a surprise, because it’s definitely a state that I wasn’t considering moving to. However, being with him has always felt like home. So I told Jay, wherever we move, whether it’s living in your parents’ basement or wherever we end up moving, you always feel like home. So I’m okay, if you’re okay.”

In your own words, what is Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI), Type 3? 

Jay: 

“I would say...OI is a brittle bone disorder. It causes our bones to fracture more easily or break more easily. Also, because of our short stature, we're considered little people, and we're unable to walk and stand. I also have dentinogenesis imperfecta, which is also very common to have along with OI.” 

“A lot of people know OI as a brittle bone condition, however, there's other health problems that can come up like gastrointestinal issues, which is something that we both deal with and we’ve been hospitalized for before, which you would see in the season. Also breathing problems happen and heart issues can happen a lot of times, which is the leading cause of death for people with OI. Our friend Simon, who had the same type as us, passed away from heart failure in his 40’s in 2022.”

As people living with OI Type 3, Jay and Pamela acknowledge that their unique situation as a couple who has access to ADA-compliant housing, financial and medical resources, and a stable, supportive family is not typical for many people with OI. They emphasize that they are not a one-size-fits-all representation of people with OI, but rather an example—a window into the lives of two individuals navigating living with this condition. 

Jay: 

“I feel like one important thing to note is that we’re just one example and we speak about this throughout the show. We’re very privileged to be where we are because this is a very rare thing and not just talking about our condition. For us to live independently or think about living independently when it comes to finance, home, I mean there’s so many layers.” 

“Thankfully, my parents have always been financially stable. I always had that financial stability. We just want to speak about the fact that we both are very privileged to be where we are. This isn’t a typical scenario, so we don’t want it to seem like every person that has OI Type 3 is going to have the same experience or should have the same experience. Everyone’s experience is going to be different.” 

Pamela: 

“We’re just learning as we go, just like any other couple. Like he said, we are really privileged in the sense that we've had a good support system. For myself, I’ve had great teachers help me navigate to end up in college and I ended up getting a bachelor’s degree debt free because it was a scholarship that I worked hard for. However, I did live on government assistance.” 

“My parents didn’t have a wheelchair accessible home like his parents had for him, because they were in a different income tax bracket. Me living on my own as an adult helped me go to college and expand and be independent. I used to have a caregiver and now I don’t need a caregiver anymore because I have built a lot of life skills to be able to physically do things independently.” 

“It’s just our story. This is a possibility for others. It’s okay if you have a disability and it doesn’t look like our life, because everyone’s life is important and just as worthy as ours.” 

Accessibility is a recurring theme throughout the show. Do you feel that people with disabilities are often an afterthought in the design of infrastructure such as housing, venues, and public spaces? 

Jay: 

“Absolutely. It's definitely a systemic thing, which can relate to how things are set up systemically and can impact our lives, especially for disabled people as a whole. We are definitely an afterthought in society and a lot of times not even seen as human, so our value is always put into question.”

“We’re really only taken seriously when we're seen as the inspirational trope. When we're able to inspire people, we're great. When we're talking about real issues that impact us every single day…accessibility affects everybody.” 

“When you're not wanting to climb up those 20 stairs and you take the elevator, that is an accessibility tool that you're having access to. When you're going to that bigger bathroom because you need a little leg room, that is an accessibility tool.”

“So we all are benefiting from accessibility being prevalent in society. The more that people are attached to that idea that excessive lack of accessibility affects everybody then more laws and things would be put in place and buildings and structures would be made accessible at the forefront.” 

“It's something that should be thought about a lot because at any time anybody can become disabled. The thing about the disability community is that you can become a part of it at any point in time.” 

Jay, what was your coming out experience like as a trans man to your parents? 

Jay: 

“Growing up. I didn't even know what transgender was. That wasn't a conversation. I was just myself. I would play a cowboy every single year at the talent show and the people working there just thought I was gay. I was just able to be myself. I played with different types of toys and I didn't have to play with one or the other.”

“Now, once I got to high school, I feel like for my mom, I think it became more important for her to fall in line with certain roles and structures and things like that. Because as a kid, for the most part, you're able to be. But it stops being adorable once you get to a certain age. Now, you have to start wearing these types of clothing and fall in line with these types of societal expectations. So, I went to my prom, I did all the things a good daughter does.” 

“Once I got to college, that was my real first time seeing other people being themselves. In high school, it's typically weird for everybody. You might say, hey, this person is probably gay. But they're like, I'm not gay. And you're like, okay, we’ll see six years from now. And then you see them on Facebook, they're gay. Or they transition or whatever. There were only a few people that I knew that were out publicly in school, but it wasn't a majority. And definitely not transgender. That was not really a thing at all.” 

“Once I got to college, I learned about non-binary, I saw transgender men and transgender women and was like this is really coming together for me. Once I graduated college I was dressing in more masculine clothes and that's pretty much as far as it had gotten during my time in school. I was in therapy and I remember like man I'm gonna have to have this conversation with my parents about where I'm at now.”

“I chose therapy because I wanted the conversation to be structured in a way where it wasn't super emotionally driven. It wasn't all over the place. I wanted it to make sense because this was going to be (no pun intended), a very big transition in my life. I wanted to make sure that someone who had no emotional bias could kind of clear things up."

Pamela, what was your coming out experience as a pansexual woman? 

Pamela: 

“I didn’t know anything about the LGBTQ+ community. I grew up in a Catholic household. So very traditional, just a man and a woman together and don't have sex until you're married. After marriage is when you have kids and have sex.”

“However, at a certain point around the time I was in middle school, I learned that there's just gay or lesbian, one or the other. That's all I knew.”

“For me it was awkward because internally I was like, I get crushes with girls, but also with boys too, so I felt a lot of guilt and shame. I just didn't talk to no one about it even though I had friends who were coming out as gay or lesbian because I had all types of friendships. To me I was like well I’m weirder than them because I’m not gay or lesbian I don't know what I am. I seem to like both genders. I don't know what's going on. So I just didn't talk about it.” 

“And then in college as well, I learned a lot about intersectionality and different words and also about history, like Two-Spirited and all that. And I was like, OK, I'm not weird or anything like that. I just love who I love.”

“I love who I love, whoever I fall in love with, that's okay. But I never came out to my family. My siblings always kind of knew. They told me, not that long ago, ‘yeah, we kind of knew you also liked women and then we just never talked about it’. I respect them for never telling my parents and just giving me the space to figure out myself and not add more shame to it.”

“When it came to meeting Jay, I was already comfortable in who I was at the time, so when I learned about him I wasn't sure about his gender identity because he's gone viral before and I remember him a certain way. I was thinking maybe he has a twin. I was confused, but I figured the conversation would come up naturally.” 

“As we continued to talk, we would be on the phone and he's like, ‘give me a second I need to put on my testosterone’. And I'm like, huh? I don’t know how the conversation went but Jay said he’s been transitioning for a certain amount of time. I'm like, oh, okay. It’s honest though. We were just friends at the time.” 

You’re both very open and transparent when it comes to discussing your sex life. It was really cool to see you two speak at a sex conference. Does talking about sex come naturally to the both of you, or is it based on a desire to normalize the experience of sex for people living with disabilities. 

Jay: 

“So we're completely opposite on the spectrum. I am not open. This is the most open I've ever talked about sex. All the one-liners on the show are just me and my personality. Those were stories I would have taken to the grave. At the moment, I was like this is a funny story and now it’s a meme!” 

“Pamela is the first sexual partner I’ve had. I didn’t even think about sex like that. I don’t even remember having many conversations with my parents about it to that degree. I don't even feel like for them it felt like it was going to be relevant because I wasn't really interested or talking about it.” 

“To talk about it, especially in front of a bunch of people is also like a next level thing. I was super nervous to do it where everyone was like, ‘are you going to be okay doing a sex conference?’ I was like, ‘I got it. I'm going to be good. You just wait.’”

“For me, it felt very liberating, honestly, to talk about sex, especially as a disabled person and being able to talk about my experience and then of course, with the intersectionality of being a trans man and how I navigate my body and navigate sex and all these different layers and things like that. For me, actually doing that experience of going to a whole sex conference and seeing a variety of different people and just everything was overstimulating.” 

Pamela: 

“Growing up, especially when I was a teenager, I was nerdy and very reserved when it came to lovey dovey stuff. After my first real relationship, I realized I don’t know much. I didn’t know what was going on. Also, when I was studying with my degree in sociology, I found a lot of research that shows a lot of people with disabilities are not given the same resources as an average adult because of the stigma of assuming people with disabilities are not having sex.” 

“That has happened to me where I was not offered birth control, because of the assumption that I’m not having sex, although I said I was in a relationship.” 

“Also when I was volunteering back in Missouri before meeting Jay, I helped and mentored a lot of youth with disabilities and they did not know the basics of condoms or anything like that and they were already 20. That can be alarming because people with disabilities are more likely to fall into some type of sexual abuse because of the lack of resources and if you're not given the tools how are you going to talk about if something happened to you. That shame is even bigger.”

“So when they offered us the opportunity to go to this conference, I was like, absolutely yes, because this is something I wish I would have had when I was younger.” 

Any words of encouragement or support for any Black and Brown LGBTQ+ viewers with disabilities that will be watching the show?

Jay: 

“You were born to be whoever that looks like for you. There are people that will not agree with the fact that I am who I am and that is what it is. Don’t dim your light. Don’t make yourself smaller for other people’s comfort because you’re never going to be comfortable. You're never going to be free if you do that and at the end of the day you are valuable, you are important, and you have a reason to be here.”

Pamela: 

“Don’t allow anyone to take away your joy, even if people don't understand your joy because joy can still come in different ways but it's still valuable, it's still beautiful and worthy and that's something that we both navigate through.”

“Now more than ever try to find your community. Find your why every morning to wake up. Encourage yourself to keep going, because it’s not always easy whether you have a disability or not.” 

Presently, there remains a long, troubled history of people with disabilities misrepresented in the media, reduced to pitiable, “defective”, or overly simplified inspirational heroes. When Blackness and queerness intersect with disability, these portrayals become even more sparse and outright dehumanizing if they exist at all.

Genuine portrayals of people living with disabilities are still far and few in between, especially compared to the limiting narratives that are widespread in mainstream media. That’s what makes a show like Jay & Pamela so necessary. It offers an honest, layered look into the everyday lives of two people living with disabilities.

Hopefully, this series will pave the way for more content like Jay & Pamela, where people living with disabilities are front and center with their voices heard. 

“We really hope other people that are disabled can also take over other spaces of entertainment and media,"- Jay 

“We want others to be a part of this, not just reality TV, but commercials and comedy shows, just more diversity everywhere,” chimed Pamela.

Watch the first season of Jay & Pamela on TLC. New episodes air every Tuesday at 10/9c. The season finale premieres on April 22.

Check out our full video interview with Jay and Pamela below: