Your Favourite Queer Eye Stars Just Met For The First Time & It Was Emotional

The most recent installment of feel-good reality series Queer Eye hit Netflix in November of 2019, and took the revamped Fab Five — aka Jonathan Van Ness, Antoni Porowski, Bobby Berk, Tan France, and Karamo Brown — all the way across the ocean to Tokyo for a special entitled We’re In Japan. Now, in a new Queer Eye video, a fan favourite from We’re In Japan joins forces with the Fab Five’s very first female makeover winner. Peach cobbler is baked, matcha is brewed, and a forever friendship is formed — just in time for Galentine's Day.

Tammye Hicks — better known as Mama Tammye — was featured in season 2 of the series. Though Berk, the show's design specialist, was supposed to revamp her house on the show, she asked for her community centre to score the makeover instead, hoping that it would become a safe haven for members of the LGBTQ+ community. In honour of Tammye’s generosity, the Fab Five gave both the community centre and her house a makeover. 

“There’s love and there’s hate. If you’re building love, you’re tearing down hate. If you’re building hate, you’re tearing down love,” Tammye said of the experience in a 2018 interview with Refinery29. “The whole experience [of having Queer Eye come to Georgia] opened people’s eyes to see that some of the things you’ve been doing that you thought were in the name of love — maybe you need to examine. Perhaps it was building up hate. I think that’s the biggest thing right there.”

Tammye, who was reunited with the Queer Eye guys at her community centre in September of 2018, was joined by Berk for a video which introduced her to Yoko, a nurse receiving a Fab Five makeover in We’re In Japan. Like Tammye, Yoko was described by friends as totally selfless — which meant she had to take a little more time for herself when not helping others. 

Given how similar Tammye and Yoko are, it’s only fitting that the Fab Five arranged a meeting between the two. In appropriate fashion, the two women bond over their shared passion for cooking: Tammye teaches Yoko how to make a peach cobbler, while Yoko instructs Tammye on making traditional matcha tea. 

Berk also has a guest appearance when he surprises the women in the kitchen, explaining why Tammye and Yoko were destined to meet.

“I think one of the reason that so many have connected with Mama Tammye and Yoko in particular is because of the love that just oozes out of them," he says. "There are so many similarities between these two. Both are such givers. Both lost their sister to cancer. I just have a feeling that they are going to find a little piece of their sister in each other.” 

Tammye agrees with Berk, telling Yoko:

“You have the spirit of my sister. I have that connection with you. It’s like she’s all around me, right now.”

Pass the tissues — and the peach cobbler, if you have any.