Ellen and Portia Do Oprah

Ellen DeGeneres and wife Portia de Rossi have given their first joint interview to Oprah Winfrey. On the November 9 episode of Winfrey's syndicated talk show DeGeneres, who was photographed alongside Winfrey on four different covers of the December issue of O magazine, revealed that she plans to be with De Rossi "until the day I die."

DeGeneres and De Rossi both say that it is important to them to have the official "marriage" title. "The thing about being a gay couple is that in the past you referred to your wife and there was quotation marks around it. There was always that chance that people would kind of snicker about it," De Rossi states. "Now it's fact. It's law. She's my wife. I get to say that she's my wife, and that's just the way it is."

DeGeneres began dating De Rossi in 2004 and the pair wed in the summer of 2008, before Proposition 8 repealed the same-sex marriage rights granted by the California supreme court.