Two Hollywood Icons Were Married For Nearly 70 Years Without People Ever Realizing

So, without further ado: Remember George Feeny and Lily Bolander from Boy Meets World? They were married in real life! Actors William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett have been husband and wife for almost seven decades – imagine that – but they maintain low-key-enough profiles that many people don’t even know. So what’s their secret to such a long-lasting marriage?

Bartlett and Daniels first met at Northwestern University, and they had something in common right away. Both were determined to make it in the acting world. Daniels had been performing on Broadway since the age of 14, and Bartlett wished to follow in the footsteps of her Shakespearian actor father.

Daniels told On Call: The Official Newsletter of the St. Elsewhere Appreciation Club in 1997, “I was 20-21. I don’t think I would have gotten into Northwestern if I hadn’t already been on Broadway because I wasn’t much of a student. Also I was on the GI Bill... I never would have gotten to Northwestern without it, after I spent two years in the Army.” But if he hadn’t, he’d never have met Bartlett.

Bartlett likewise might never have gone to Northwestern had things in her life been different. She told the Edge Media Network website in 2019, “Growing up, I performed in school plays and local theatre. After high school, I enrolled in Northwestern because my father wouldn’t let me go to New York.”

Daniels told On Call about the day he met Bartlett. He said, “She was 18 and a freshman... I met her at a reading of a play called ‘Bury the Dead,’ and everybody was sitting around reading for it. I was a cocky youth and I thought they were all terrible until I heard this girl read.”

That girl was, of course, his future wife. Daniels recalled, “I turned around and there was Bonnie, and I said to myself, ‘now there’s an actress!’ So I waited at the door after the reading and I asked her out for a cup of coffee.” Bartlett wasn’t actually sure about dating him however.

Daniels remembered to On Call, “She said, ‘You’re too short.’ I think she had dated a couple of basketball players in Illinois.” And Bartlett told the same publication, “I thought he was too short for me and I promptly told him so. And Bill said, ‘Oh for God’s sake!’ So we went out for coffee and we were pretty much together from that time on.”

The pair were married in 1951, just after they graduated from Northwestern. Then they set about furthering their careers with private acting classes and working their way up. The pair played one of the most famous Shakespearian couples on stage, Lord and Lady Macbeth. Bigger and bigger roles started to come calling, too. 

Daniels became acclaimed for his work as a theatre actor. He even received an Obie Award, a prize given to the best off-Broadway performers, for 1958’s The Zoo Story. Meanwhile, Bartlett won the role of Vanessa Dale Raven on the soap opera Love of Life, and she stayed on the show until 1959.

But despite their careers going well, the couple suffered a terrible blow in 1961. They had a child together, a boy named William Daniels Jr., and he sadly died 24 hours after he was born. Unsurprisingly the couple haven’t spoken about this much in later interviews.

In the end the couple adopted two children, Michael in 1964 and Robert in 1966. But there was more sadness to come. While raising the boys Bartlett suffered another loss, this time her niece, and the marriage became strained. Bartlett told People magazine in 2017 that during that period, “I didn’t know if he [Daniels] was going to come home or not.”

Bartlett told People that back then, “I thought, ‘I want no part of this.’ I was very confused because there was no way I wanted to take the boys away from him. No way. And so I thought, well – I was pondering it.” But at the funeral for Bartlett’s niece, who she “adored,” Daniels convinced his wife to go to Los Angeles with him.

Daniels himself remembered to People magazine, “I got her to come out [to L.A.] on the proposition that it will just be for the summer. And then we can go back to New York. But then I introduced her to my agents, and they started sending her out. She got it all. Every time she went out, she got the job. So she began to change her mind.” Was something special on the horizon, then?

At this point Daniels was doing pretty well on television. In 1967 he got the lead role on the show Captain Nice, where he played a mild-mannered police chemist who was capable of changing into a superhero. The show only lasted a few episodes, but the roles kept coming. In 1972 he played John Adams in the film 1776.

But what about Bartlett? She remembered to On Call, “I had stopped acting for ten years when we adopted the boys. I had forgotten myself as an actress…One day Bill sent me to his agent and I was then sent to Michael Landon. Mike put me on Little House on the Prairie just like that. So here I was, a lady in her 40s back in the business.”

And Bartlett loved being on the show. She told Edge Media, “What made my character great was that sometimes the storylines were funny and then they could be serious. There was a great range of emotion that you got to portray… playing Grace was like falling off a log. It was like I was put back in the 1880s and I was who I was meant to be.”

This newfound career success also helped fix Bartlett’s relationship with her husband. She told People, “Suddenly, working like that and living in a little house in the valley with the boys and finding a nice school for them and everything, I sort of connected with him again. It took a little while – it took about a year of really hating him.”

And then came one of the TV shows Daniels and Bartlett are most remembered for, St. Elsewhere. Bartlett wasn’t sure about taking the role of her real husband’s onscreen wife, but eventually – after Daniels taught her to smoke for the role – she relented. And it worked out very well indeed.

Both Daniels and Bartlett had found themselves in the busy world of television. Daniels was doing two iconic roles at the same time: both Dr. Mark Craig in St. Elsewhere and the voice of KITT in Knight Rider. Bartlett too was winning acclaim. In 1987 she and Daniels both picked up Emmy awards for St Elsewhere, only the second husband-and-wife team to win for the same show in the same year.

But there was still more to come. In 1993 both Daniels and Bartlett were cast on Boy Meets World, and Daniels suddenly became known to a whole new generation. He played teacher George Feeny, and Bartlett played the college dean who eventually became his wife. And the show certainly left its mark on one Hollywood A-lister’s family. 

Bartett remembered to On Call in 1997, “We saw Denzel Washington the other night in a restaurant and he was with his wife and four kids. It was so cute because one of the boys wanted to come up and shake hands with Bill. Bill obliged and Denzel said ‘You know it has nothing to do with St. Elsewhere... it’s because you are Mr. Feeney!’”

Mr. Feeny became beloved among fans of television, much to Daniels’ surprise. Bartlett told Forbes magazine in late December 2020, “He doesn’t understand why people love him that much. He really doesn’t understand it… He loves it that people care, but it’s hard to understand. He’s just an actor.”

And speaking of love – what exactly is the secret to Daniels and Bartlett’s long-lasting marriage? Well, they’ve been asked that several times throughout their careers. In 2021 with both now in their 90s, Daniels told Forbes, “I think our relationship is based on mutual respect and I think she is smarter than me, a better actor than me, and so I just hang out, you know, and try to get along.”

Right after Daniels said that to the interviewer, Bartlett joked, “He doesn’t mean that at all!” And then she revealed what she thought the secret was. “He makes me laugh. His humor, his sense of humor and his ability during every day to find something funny is really good for me because I’m very intense. So I honestly would say that and being a great father – he’s a great father.”

Bartlett was also asked the “what is the secret to your marriage with William?” question in her 2019 interview with Edge Media Network. She answered, “Love, admiration for each other (and the work that we do), and perseverance. William is a kind, gentle, and loving man. He has kept me laughing since day one.”

She had a slightly different, though very funny take back in 2017. When she and Daniels spoke about their marriage to the Salon website that year, Daniels said, “We help each other, and we respect each other, and that’s the ingredients I think that makes a successful relationship.” But Bartlett quipped, “We probably got married so we could have sex.”

Plus, Bartlett said that when she and Daniels first began dating “there was no expectation of roses and, you know, wedding bells. We liked to be together, but it was not one of those wedding bells kinds of thing, or ever after, happiness....It had to do with working, and when we finally had children, I automatically just wanted to step back and take care of those kids.”

Both actors found that working together on their television projects improved their relationship. Daniels told On Call, “Bonnie working with me on St. Elsewhere was one of the happiest times of our lives.” And Bartlett said of her husband, “He is absolutely marvelous to work with, and I loved it.”

Bartlett added that while they were working on St. Elsewhere, “Sometimes people wouldn’t know we were married and they would say ‘Why is he talking to you that way, actors aren’t supposed to tell other actors how to do anything, that’s forbidden.’ And I said, ‘Well, most of the time he's right!’”

Love scenes with other actors were never a problem either. Bartlett told Forbes, while laughing, “Bill never liked any kind of love scenes and if you look at his career, he didn’t have that kind of career. If it was with me, it was okay. I, of course, as a woman, we love love scenes. Anybody!”

Daniels and Bartlett are both in their 90s now – and still very much in love, and still working. These days they’re regulars at conventions for fans of the shows they did, and they also have an account on the app Cameo which allows them to communicate with fans via video.

In April 2021 the pair did a joint interview with the website Solzy at the Movies. They expressed some amazement about how much social media influence they had. Bartlett said, “Our granddaughter has some kind of a TikTok thing or something. She put Bill on about something and she got three million viewers. Three million! We find it extraordinary—really extraordinary.”

Fans got in touch via more traditional ways as well. Daniels told the interviewer, “Mr. Feeny is a very popular fellow so I have to answer a lot of mail. Really, it’s amazing – the mail I get.” Bartlett added, “Bill also does the voice of KITT. He actually does voiceover jobs for KTT. So yeah, he’s still working.”

And Bartlett also mused regarding her marriage. She told Solzy at the Movies, “The whole world we are facing now – such a world and you have got to be able to change with it. You’ve got to be able to move with it. It’s a moving thing and a marriage is a moving thing and you have to be able to change with what are the different things that go on.”

Asked how the pandemic had been for them, Bartlett said, “Well, for us, it’s been okay. We’re just here. We’re very old so we’re very content [to] stay home. The only thing is that we haven’t been able to see our kids in New York and we haven’t been able to see our grandchildren very much here.”

They had been able to see their older son Michael, but that was about it. Bartlett told Solzy, “We’ve missed some things. I think it’s easier on us because we’re of a certain age where we don’t have that much energy to run around, anyway, so we’re fine.” Eventually they were able to get vaccinated.

Daniels has also been keeping fans updated on him and Bartlett via his Instagram account, which has 139k followers these days. It’s packed full of adorable selfies of the couple. One of Daniels’ first posts, back in 2016, read, “Every week my wife, Bonnie and I hit our little gym. She’s faster than me.”

There’s also a lot on there about Daniels and Bartlett’s lives as parents and grandparents. Daniels used the Instagram to announce in June 2021, “Feeling proud never ends with this family of mine. A huge congrats to my granddaughter Grace for graduating high school and heading off to NYU in the fall. I’ll try not to follow you there.”

Daniels also posts throwback pictures of his sons sometimes, as well as modern-day photos of him and Bartlett having fun with their whole family. One nice shot from January 2017 was captioned by Daniels, “My large and lovely family - this is what the holidays are about for me!” Awww.

So in a world where “Hollywood marriage” is practically shorthand for “brief, difficult marriage” it’s nothing short of a miracle to see couples go the length. And it seems that keeping personal details private may just be the answer. If Bartlett and Daniels’ love story isn’t enough to sell the idea, then how about Dolly Parton? The Queen of Country has been married for over half a century, so her romance credentials are off the charts. And what she had to say about her secretive relationship is a sure-fire way to avoid an achy breaky heart.

Have you heard the story of Dolly Parton and her husband? No? Well, you’re probably not alone. After all, chances are that you might not even have known that Parton has a husband. And that’s because the outspoken country rarely talks about her private life with Carl Dean, a man who’s every bit as quiet and reclusive as his wife is confident and loud. Until now, that is...

Dolly Parton always wanted to be on stage, of course. And while the young Parton undoubtedly had plenty of talent, she had a remarkable amount of luck as well. Just 24 hours after she graduated from high school, for instance, the ambitious teen packed her bags for Nashville – and it was a good thing she did.

The would-be star then quickly made Nashville her new home. And it wasn’t long before she ran into a man named Carl Dean outside the Wishy Washy Laundromat. It was the classic unexpected romantic encounter – because affairs of the heart were the last things that Parton had on her mind at that point. Still, she fell for Dean immediately.

In 2014, in fact, Parton recalled the moment that she first encountered Dean. “I was walking down the street to the laundromat, and he stopped me,” she explained. “He said, ‘Hey, you’re going to get sunburned out here!’” The following conversation turned out to be one of the most important of Parton’s life, too.

Parton has also revealed more about these early stages of the relationship on her website. “I was surprised and delighted that while he talked to me, he looked at my face (a rare thing for me),” she said. “He seemed to be genuinely interested in finding out who I was and what I was about.”

The young pair – Parton was aged just 18, while Dean was 21 – then started to go on dates. And as it happened, they were a match made in heaven; their seemingly opposing personalities fit together perfectly. And so, after two years as boyfriend and girlfriend, the couple decided that it was time to get married.

But Parton’s record label wasn’t happy with the idea of her walking down the aisle. In fact, the label requested that she delay the nuptials for a while. Parton wasn’t having any of that, however. Showing the independent spirit that would make her a music legend, the singer simply eloped to Georgia with her fiancé.

The wedding was a very small one as a result. In fact, the only guests present to witness the union were the preacher, the preacher’s wife and the bride’s mother, Avie Lee Parton. But as you might expect, the happy couple were nonetheless beaming on the day.

Parton’s wedding was also non-traditional in another respect: she didn’t publicly take her husband’s name. So, although her passport changed to read Dolly Parton Dean, the star remained known to her fans as Dolly Parton. “I didn’t change names because I already had a record deal. It made no sense,” she told The Guardian. “[Dean] never asked me to.”

Back in those days, you see, the couple couldn’t have known for certain that Parton was going to make it as a singer. They certainly didn’t know that she’d become a world-famous one. But by the mid-1970s the young blonde was topping the charts with hits such as “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You.”

Yet one of her other hit tunes – as diehard Parton fans will know – was actually written for her husband. Yes, “From Here to the Moon and Back” is all about her relationship with Dean. Throughout the track, in fact, the lyrics state, “Love everlasting, I promise you that, from here to the moon and back.”

Sadly, though, a sudden thrust into the spotlight has spelled the end of many a relationship. Yet fame and fortune did not break the bond between Parton and Dean. In fact, he was a reclusive businessman in the paving industry with no desire whatsoever for celebrity. But he nonetheless stood by his wife through it all.

Dean even had to put up with affair rumors. In the ’80s and ’90s, specifically, there were whispers that Parton’s marriage to Dean was a front for a relationship with her pal Judy Ogle. But in 1991 Parton firmly told Vanity Fair, “She’s not my lover. She has never been my lover. If we were lovers, I would not be ashamed of it, I’d just say there’s a great love between us – so there.”

In fact, Parton was adamant throughout that whole period that neither party in her marriage was worried about affairs. She told Rolling Stone in 1980, “My husband likes the freedom as much as I do. He’s got his own work to do, and he’s glad when I’m gone a certain amount of time. We’re not afraid that one of us is gonna run off with somebody else, because we couldn’t find in nobody else what we found in each other.”

So the decades passed, and the pair remained bonded by marriage. It was seemingly a blissful union too. When the pair hit 50 years together, then, they decided to celebrate – by renewing their vows in a private ceremony. The May 2016 event was so exclusive, in fact, that no images have ever been released.

But even though there are no public photos, Parton was happy to paint a picture of the marriage with her words. “He really is my best friend,” she told Closer in March 2017, finally speaking to the world about her most treasured but private of relationships. “If I had it to do all over, I’d do it all over again. And we did.”

“I’m dragging him, kicking and screaming, into the next 50 years!” Parton joked to the publication. And the star had another little treat for her loyal fans, too. The couple’s wedding outfits – Parton’s dress and Dean’s suit – went on display at the Dollywood theme park in July 2017.

With so very little known about her relationship, though, it’s in some ways refreshing to hear Parton opening up about it. On the star’s official website, for example, it’s stated that the couple have faced “many of life’s obstacles” and “plenty of unique challenges.” But we may never know the exact details for certain.

Yet we do know the most important thing: the pair love each other very much. “Nearly every aspect of Dolly and Carl’s personalities compliment one another,” Parton’s website reads. “While one would think Dolly would be the most entertaining of the two, she often says that it’s Carl’s unique sense of humor which keeps her laughing.”

Parton’s sister Stella thinks the couple are perfect for each other as well – even with Dean being as private as he is. “When it’s important stuff family-wise, he’s there – weddings, births, and funerals. But he doesn’t care a thing about all the public stuff. It’s not his bag at all, and we respect that,” she told Closer.

In the press release for the vow renewal ceremony, however, Dean did answer one question about his relationship. When asked what it was like the first time that he saw Parton, he replied, “My first thought was, ‘I’m gonna marry that girl.’ My second thought was, ‘Lord, she’s good looking.’ And that was the day my life began. I wouldn’t trade the last 50 years for nothing on this Earth.”

Parton shared some of the secrets of her relationship to People in 2018, too. She said, “I always joke and laugh when people ask me what’s the key to my long marriage and lasting love. I always say, ‘Stay gone!’ And there’s a lot of truth to that. I travel a lot, but we really enjoy each other when we’re together and the little things we do.”

Some of those little things are as simple as eating fast food. Parton remembered, “When I met my husband, he wanted to take me out to dinner. He pulled up to the drive-in window and got our food at McDonald’s. We know a few little places we can go without being bothered. He only likes to go places where he can be comfortable!”

Parton said her husband also “knows [she’s] always going to kind of be fixed up for him because [she doesn’t] believe in going home and being a slouch.” But the star added that Dean doesn’t mind if she doesn’t look 100 percent all the time. She said, “He doesn’t care what I wear as long as I’m happy. He loves me the way I am.”

About her vow renewal ceremony, Parton said, “I never really felt like I had the wedding that we really wanted. He got all dressed up, and I got all dressed up. Fifty years is a long time for anything, and I felt that we needed to do something to commemorate this. It’s been a good 50 years, and I don’t know how many more years we’ll have left.”

After all, in February 2019 Parton shared a slightly shocking secret: her husband doesn’t particularly like her music. This is despite the fact that Parton has won multiple awards, including nine Grammys, three American Music Awards and seven Academy of Country Music Awards, among others. Apparently, though, her songs just aren’t to his taste.

Appearing on the show Good Morning Britain to advertise 9 To 5: The Musical, Parton explained, “He’s not necessarily one of the biggest fans of my music.” Dean also tends not to watch her perform her songs live on stage. However, this is for another reason – and a touching one, at that.

Parton told the Good Morning Britain host, “For years and years, he would never come to the shows because he felt like he’d get nervous if I messed up. So he never wanted to watch it. The first time he saw me perform and that I was in control of the stage, he was okay.”

Dean has now seen his wife perform on stage “maybe a couple or two” times, according to Parton. She said, “He likes hard rock, he likes Led Zeppelin and bluegrass music, so my music is somewhere in between. He doesn’t dislike it, but he doesn’t go out of his way to play my records. Let’s put it that way.”

But despite that, Dean has nothing but pride in her many accomplishments, Parton claimed. As she explained on Good Morning Britain, “He’s proud of me. And he loves that I love what I do. I think it’s just… it’s a touchy subject. I’m like his little girl, I think. He just worries about that.”

That same month, Parton also discussed her life and marriage with British tabloid The Sun. The interviewer brought up the old rumors about Parton and her friend Judy Ogle, and once more she firmly denied them. She said, “People love to talk – but sometimes that’s your best publicity. I don’t care what they say as long as they don’t hurt other people I love.”

Though The Sun mentioned that Parton and Dean might have had an “open and free relationship” at one point, Parton herself said nothing about this rumor. She only said of her husband, “He’s a good man. It is a true love story, and he’s my best buddy. He’s crazy, he’s funny.”

Parton went on, “So I think laughter has been a big part of our relationship. We both have a lot of fun. And we’re not in the same business. He doesn’t care about that. He’s pretty much a homebody, loves staying around home. We live out on a farm. He likes to mow the fields and work on his tractors.”

The Sun also brought up the subject of children. That’s because Parton had a hysterectomy at the age of 36 and thought that a family of her own probably “wasn’t meant to be.” She does have a famous goddaughter, though: pop star Miley Cyrus. Parton is friends with her father, Billy Ray.

The Sun asked Parton whether she thought she’d have been as successful if she and Dean had had children. She answered, “Chances are, not. I look at everything like it happened the way that it was supposed to. I’m pretty sure if I’d had kids I would not have done as much. I always think, ‘Well, maybe God didn’t mean for me to have children, so everybody’s children could be mine.’”

Yet there are a lot of members of Parton’s family; she was one of 12 kids born to her parents. But she doesn’t necessarily feel like she or Dean missed out. She told The Sun, “My husband feels the same way. Now that we are older, we’re almost kind of glad that we don’t have a bunch of grandkids driving us crazy.”

Later on in 2019 Parton released a new show for Netflix called Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings. The show is an anthology about the inspirations behind some of the singer’s most popular songs, such as “Jolene” and “Two Doors Down.” And naturally, people asked about Dean while she was promoting it.

On the red carpet for the premiere of the show, for instance, Parton told People, “[Dean is] always supporting me as long as I don’t try to drag him in on it. He’s always been my biggest fan behind the scenes, but he’s at home. I don’t think they’re probably showing much of this on TV and if they do, he might see it.”

Parton added of her husband, “But anyway, he’d never come dragging around. I’d rather bring somebody else with me, you know? He’s never jealous of that either.” For the Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings premiere, in fact, the singer ended up bringing designer Steve Summers, plus an assortment of pals and relatives.

So while the relationship between the international megastar and the humble businessman may not be very public – or even particularly conventional – it seems to have worked out extremely well. And from the way both of them have spoken of each other, something has become evident. That’s to say, the Parton-Dean marriage might be one of the healthiest in showbiz.