William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett 'thrilled' to celebrate their 75th anniversary, weeks after 'open marriage' discourse
William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett 'thrilled' to celebrate their 75th anniversary, weeks after 'open marriage' discourse
Kathleen PerriconeTue, June 30, 2026 at 8:41 PM UTC
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Bonnie Bartlett and William DanielsCredit: David Livingston/GettyKey Points -
William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett celebrate their 75th wedding anniversary on June 30.
"The time has gone by so quickly, we never even realized it," Hollywood's longest-married couple tells EW exclusively.
Daniels, 99, and Bartlett, 97, recently made headlines for the revelation they once had a "little bit of an open marriage."
Hollywood's longest-married couple have officially reached their 75th wedding anniversary.
Boy Meets World actor William Daniels and his wife, Emmy Award winner Bonnie Bartlett, tell Entertainment Weekly they are "thrilled" to celebrate the record-breaking diamond milestone today, three-quarters of a century after they got married on June 30, 1951.
"The time has gone by so quickly, we never even realized it," marvels the couple, who met as college students at Northwestern University in the late 1940s.
For their very special anniversary, Daniels, 99, and Bartlett, 97, tell EW they plan to celebrate with all the California-based members of their family, including their sons, Michael and Robert, and grandchildren.
As the actress previously explained, it's easier to "have people come to us" these days, especially for Daniels. "It's very hard to move him around in a big restaurant or something to party. That's tough for him," she said.
But the couple did manage to get out recently to celebrate Bartlett's 97th birthday on June 20. Daniels shared a photo of his beloved wife wearing a pink "Happy Birthday" crown with his 234,000 Instagram followers. "She's the sail of our ship and I love to celebrate her every chance I get," he gushed in the caption.
Daniels and Bartlett, best known for Little House on the Prairie and St. Elsewhere, made headlines earlier this year after revealing they had "a little bit of an open marriage" during the first two decades of their relationship.
"There was never any discussion as to what we were going to do," Bartlett explained to the Daily Mail. "It was non-spoken. Bill and I never sit down and make rules. 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... We never got unhinged, but our lives did go in different directions occasionally."
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Bartlett detailed her own months-long affair with a costar in her 2023 memoir, Middle of the Rainbow.
Four years into her marriage to Daniels, she scored a recurring role on the CBS soap opera Love of Life, a success that caused a rift with her envious husband, who was then a struggling actor.
During her last year on the show in 1959, an unnamed male costar invited her to lunch. "I found him slightly boring," Bartlett admitted, "but then he said these words: 'I'm crazy about you.'"
William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett at the 1986 Primetime Emmy AwardsCredit: Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty
The affair lasted months, with the two meeting up twice a week. "The sex was good," Bartlett confessed in Middle of the Rainbow. "I never felt guilty because I never felt tied to fidelity, and neither did Bill."
Bartlett became so enamored with her extramarital partner, "I began to consider marrying this man," she revealed. And after speaking to her therapist, she did eventually ask Daniels to move out. He did, but returned an hour later and refused to leave.
"This is my apartment," he told his wife, according to her memoir. "My books are here. My records are here. If you want to split, then you leave!"
Bartlett recalled being amused at her husband's intense emotion, and she subsequently ended the brief affair.
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"We never spoke of it again," she wrote. "During our almost 70 years together, Bill often speaks of our marriage as having been three or four marriages. This was the end of one of them. I said goodbye to my kinder and gentler man and Bill and I moved on together."
A little more than a decade later, Daniels had his own affair with a producer in the 1970s. It was at this point, Bartlett revealed in her book, that she realized she "could no longer tolerate any kind of open marriage."
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
