Boy Meets World stars William Daniels, 99, and Bonnie Bartlett, 96, have detailed the rules of their “open marriage” as they approach 75 years together.
Bartlett said while the pair had both stepped outside the marriage at times, it wasn’t something that they planned.
“It’s funny, the press will pick up on something and make more of it than it was,” she said in an interview with the Daily Mail.
“There was never any discussion as to what we were going to do, but in 75 years, the two of you together, you know, it would be abnormal if you…weren’t attracted occasionally to other people.”
The actress first wrote about the pair’s relationship in her 2023 memoir, Middle of the Rainbow.
She and Daniels, known for playing Mr Feeny on the beloved sitcom Boy Meets World, first met in 1948.
Bartlett added that the pair never actually decided they were going to have an open relationship.
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“Bill and I never sit down and make rules,” she said. “We never sit down and talk about these things. We just don’t. We just live our lives. And if he’s away for a year, he’s away for a year.
“Our lives just went on, but we never got unhinged … We never got unhinged, but our lives did go in different directions occasionally.”
However, the actress, who starred in both Boy Meets World and The Little House on the Prairie, had previously referred to the couple having an “open marriage,” saying that it was “very painful” and “didn’t work well.”
“And it was a time when people were doing that,” she said.
“It was at a time in New York when there was a lot of sex and a lot of people doing all kinds of things, you know – very free.”
She confessed that she had an affair that “lasted a few months” with an actor in 1959, eight years into her marriage with Daniels.
Daniels also had a relationship with a producer in the ’70s, which Bartlett said “devastated her,” leading to the realisation that she “could no longer tolerate any kind of open marriage.”
The actress confessed that she almost couldn’t believe the couple have been together for 75 years.
“You don’t plan for it. You really don’t plan for it,” she said.
“I’m not at all romantic or anything like that. I’m a big believer in today, you know? And then all of a sudden it’s 75 years. It’s kind of amazing, I must say.”
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