Betty White Dead astatine 99: Remembering the Actress

When it came to love, the 3rd clip was surely the charm for Betty White.

The legendary entertainer, who would've turned 101 on Jan. 17, had joined Army Air Forces pilot Dick Barker in 1945—and divorced him that year, too, aft helium tried to bring the Beverly Hills High School postgraduate location to roost connected his Ohio chickenhearted farm. "A nightmare," she called that experience.

Then, successful 1947, she tied the knot with Lane Allen, an actor turned endowment agent. Their national lasted hardly 2 years, White beating her retreat erstwhile helium wanted her to halt moving truthful much, though they remained friends.

Her career successful vigor and TV subsequently took disconnected successful the 1950s, highlights including starring successful and producing the sitcom Life With Elizabeth, for which she won a Los Angeles Area Emmy for Most Outstanding Female Personality, and hosting her ain eponymous speech show. While she had boyfriends, the legally unattached beingness seemed to suit her.

So by the time a 39-year-old White met Password host Allen Ludden when she started appearing connected the CBS show, 1 of galore crippled shows that welcomed her arsenic a favourite personage impermanent done the years, she whitethorn have felt a spark close away, but she was successful nary unreserved to link for the agelong haul.

And past their agents—"you cognize however they are," White quipped during a 1997 interrogation for the TV Academy Foundation—booked them to prima unneurotic successful a 1962 summertime banal accumulation of Critic's Choice, a drama astir a theatre professional whose woman writes a play and he's unsure of whether helium should springiness her an honorable opinion, astatine the Cape Playhouse connected Cape Cod.

Ludden aboriginal said helium fell successful emotion with White connected opening night.

"We were up determination for 3 weeks and beauteous soon he didn't accidental hello, he'd say, 'Will you wed me?'' White recalled to the TV Academy. "It was a joke! I'd laughter it off, he'd laughter it off. And past beauteous soon I came backmost home. I was going precise steadily with someone!"

Undeterred by her archetypal refusals, he bought a ring—"a beauteous golden wedding ringing with diamonds each around"—and for 3 months helium wore "that damned ringing connected a concatenation astir his cervix truthful I couldn't miss it," White remembered successful her 1987 memoir Betty White successful Person. "It got afloat of soap and suntan oil, but helium vowed helium would lone instrumentality it disconnected for 1 reason."

But "in emotion arsenic I was, nonetheless," she recalled, "marrying and moving eastbound was inactive not successful the equation."

Still, he'd usage up each his clip disconnected from Password to sojourn her successful California and repeatedly inquire for her hand.

They tied the knot connected June 14, 1963, astatine the Sands Hotel successful Las Vegas, honeymooned successful Laguna Beach, Calif., and settled for a clip successful Chappaqua, N.Y. White admitted that she was tense astir becoming a stepmother to Ludden's then-14-year-old lad David and daughters Martha, 13, and Sarah, 10, but the household of five—plus poodles Willie and Emma—lived reasonably harmoniously, the usual teenage increasing pains aside.

Asked aboriginal successful beingness if she ever regretted not having children of her own, White said she was "blessed" to beryllium that trio's stepmom—and she had nary regrets. "I'm truthful compulsive astir stuff, I cognize if I had ever gotten pregnant, of course, that would person been my full focus," she told Katie Couric for CBS News successful 2012. "But I didn't take to person children due to the fact that I'm focused connected my career. And I conscionable don't think, arsenic compulsive arsenic I am, that I could negociate both."

Ludden would permission emotion notes astir the location for White to find, 1 of which she credited with helping her yet see, nary pun intended, that it was clip to get her eyes checked. In her 2011 publication If You Ask Me (And of Course You Won't), she shared that 1 night he left a paper nether her pillow that work connected the front, "If you can't spot I emotion you..." and connected the wrong said, "SQUINT!"

She had a bully laugh, but besides made an assignment with the oculus doc the adjacent day. And she saved each azygous 1 of those notes.

White made dozens of appearances connected Password, which taped successful New York, until it was canceled successful 1967, and past again erstwhile it was revived arsenic a Los Angeles-based accumulation from 1971 until 1975. Ludden hosted some incarnations, after which helium helmed Password Plus, which besides welcomed his woman arsenic a impermanent whenever she was available.

At the aforesaid time, White—though she insisted that photographers telephone her Mrs. Ludden connected the reddish carpet—had reached a caller level of fame erstwhile she landed the relation of the lascivious "happy homemaker" Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a show that earned her supporting histrion Emmys successful 1975 and 1976.

"Well, she was the vicinity nymphomaniac," White recalled fondly to Couric. "And they'd inquire my husband, Allen Ludden, they'd ask, 'How adjacent to Betty [is] Sue Ann?' He said, 'Well, they're the aforesaid but Betty can't cook, of course.'"

Ludden continued to host Password Plus until 1980, erstwhile helium was diagnosed with tummy crab and took what helium hoped would beryllium a impermanent interruption to absorption connected his health.

But helium ne'er ended up going backmost to work. Ludden died astatine the property of 63 connected June 9, 1981, 5 days shy of his and White's 18th wedding anniversary. He was laid to rest in his autochthonal Wisconsin.

White did admit 1 regret to Oprah Winfrey on OWN's Where Are They Now? successful 2015: "I spent a full year—wasted a full year—that Allen and I could person had together, saying no, I wouldn't wed him. I wasted a full twelvemonth we could've had together, but we made it. We yet did."

And though White continued to scope caller heights successful her vocation aft losing Ludden, 17 much Emmy nominations and 3 wins inactive successful her future, she felt she had already peaked arsenic acold arsenic emotion was concerned. Her iconic Golden Girls character, guileless Minnesota autochthonal Rose Nylund, was a widow who played the tract to large comedic effect, but the histrion herself wasn't searching for another partner. 

"When you've had the best, who needs the rest? It was special. It was precise special," she told Couric of her third marriage in 2012. "But that doesn't support you from having amusive with idiosyncratic and going retired and having dates. And Robert Redford ne'er calls."

Not that she didn't miss being one-half of a pair. 

Saget died suddenly just days later, unaware that his sweet, hopeful words would provide some solace to grieving fans doubly successful little than 2 weeks.

White's religion successful what awaited her connected the different broadside seemed to inactive beryllium intact erstwhile she passed. Vicki Lawrence, who worked with her on The Carol Burnett Show and Mama's Family, told E!'s Daily Pop in a Jan. 3, 2021, interview that Carol Burnett had informed her that White's assistant—who was by the entertainer's side astatine the end—had shared that "the past connection retired of her rima was 'Allen.'"

"[Burnett] said, 'How saccharine and loving is that?'" Lawrence relayed. "I said, 'It's truthful saccharine and truthful loving and, god, I anticipation it's true.'"

As White told Larry King in 2010, her matrimony to Ludden was simply "the best. He was the emotion of my life." King ventured that she ne'er got implicit him, and she agreed. "Never," she said. "I ne'er will."

(Originally published Jan. 17, 2022, astatine 4 a.m. PT)