Happy Birthday to David Hyde Pierce!

His Niles Crane on Frasier is one of the most delicious comedic characters in the history of television and David Hyde Pierce has four Emmy Awards to show for it.

During the run of the series, we never really knew too much about Pierce who turns 51 today. But when he won the Tony Award for Curtains in 2007, he thanked his long-time partner, television writer, director and producer Brian Hargrove “because it’s 24 years of listening to your damn notes — that’s why I’m up here tonight.”

The couple was married in October 2008 just before the passage of California’s Proposition 8.

We didn’t deny anything, we just said, ‘We’re going to live our lives,'” he told Joy Behar in December. “But what happened was the whole ‘live and let live started to feel like ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and I didn’t want that. So that’s when I started to be more public.”