Happy Birthday to Dave Koz!

Musician Dave Koz is celebrating his 49th birthday today!

Whatever way he chooses to mark the occasion, it will most certainly be more tasteful than the over-the-top wedding of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries.

I mention the 72-day hubby and wife because Koz performed at the nuptials and later admitted it felt a lot more like a TV special than an actual wedding involving love and commitment.

Dave had long been one of America’s best-known saxophonist for years when he decided to come out publicly as a gay man in 2005.

I’ve interviewed him several times over the years and in December 2010 he told me he has had absolutely no regrets: “I’m a musician, it took me forever to come out. I never planned on doing it. It wasn’t until I was 40 that I did it. And when I finally did it, it was the right time. It was a blip on the screen, it made no impact on my career at all.”

While professionally it did not matter one iota,  it was very profound on a personal level.

“I just became a whole person for the first time,” he says. “So if some [gay] kid is growing up in some city or some rural place in the US, if they want to me a jazz musician, they can Google me and they’ll see that guy came out and it’s fine, nothing happened. If my life helps just one kid deal with this in their life, it will be worth it.”