Boy Meets World star William Daniels and wife Bonnie Bartlett are living proof that Hollywood marriages can last, with a love story spanning more than seven decades.
The twosome met while studying acting at Northwestern University and tied the knot in 1951. Despite their commitment to each other, the duo has been candid about facing struggles during their relationship.
“So much happens and you live … you hurt each other,” Bartlett told Forbes in March 2022. “We’ve hurt each other but you recover and you grow and you change and you adapt. You have to be able to adapt to the other person. You have to think of them first. It doesn’t happen overnight. It took us years to get to a real companionship marriage.”
The couple also endured a tragic loss. In 1961, the Twins actress gave birth to their son William Jr., who died 24 hours later. However, Daniels and Bartlett were determined to be parents, and they adopted sons Michael and Robert in 1964 and 1966, respectively.
Keep scrolling for a look at Daniels and Bartlett’s relationship over the years:
1951
The pair tied the knot after meeting as acting students at Northwestern University.
During a December 2020 interview with Forbes, Daniels recalled how he asked his wife out for the first time.
“I waited for her at the door of the classroom until she came by, and I said, ‘How about a cup of coffee?’ And she said, ‘You’re too short.’ I said, ‘Come on, have a cup of coffee.’ She said, ‘OK.’ Turns out, she heard I had been on Broadway. She had been following me around campus and I didn’t even know it.”
1959
In her 2023 memoir, Middle of the Rainbow, Bartlett revealed that she had “an affair that lasted a few months” with an actor who was “slightly boring” around 1959.
“I never felt guilty because I never felt tied to fidelity, and neither did Bill,” she wrote.
1961
Bartlett gave birth to the couple’s first child, son William Jr., but the newborn died just 24 hours later.
1964
The actors adopted son Michael.
1966
Daniels and Bartlett completed their family with the adoption of their son Robert.
1970s
In Middle of the Rainbow, the Wisconsin native wrote that her husband’s affair with a New York-based producer in the early 1970s left her “devastated.”
At that point, she changed her outlook on their relationship and realized that she “could no longer tolerate any kind of open marriage.”
1980s
The pair played real-life married couple Dr. Mark Craig and Ellen Craig on the medical drama St. Elsewhere, which ran from 1982 to 1988.
In 1986, Daniels and Bartlett both won Emmy awards for the show on the same night, becoming the first married couple to do so since Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in 1965.
1990s
The Northwestern University alums got to share the screen again when Bartlett played a college dean who employed her husband’s character (George Feeny) in Boy Meets World. Their characters later got married in a 1999 episode.
During a December 2022 interview with Forbes, Bartlett shared that it was hard for her husband to grasp why Mr. Feeny is so beloved by fans of the coming-of-age sitcom.
“He doesn’t understand why people love him that much. He really doesn’t understand it,” the V alum said.
2000s
The duo continued to be at each other’s side as they pursued different acting opportunities. Daniels appeared in the ninth season of Grey’s Anatomy in 2012 and reprised his role as Mr. Feeny in the pilot episode of the Boy Meets World spinoff, Girl Meets World. Bartlett, for her part, guest starred on shows including General Hospital, Boston Legal and NCIS.
2015
Daniels shared a photo via Twitter of him with his wife, sons and grandchildren.
“Bonnie, the boys and the grandkids over Easter weekend,” the New York native captioned the snap.
2016
“Workout Wednesday! Every week, my wife, Bonnie, and I hit our little gym,” the Knight Rider alum captioned an October Instagram photo of him and Bartlett on exercise machines. “She’s faster than me,” he added.”
2018
The St. Elsewhere alums took a trip to New York City together in May.
“I got to show off my California tulip to the New York tulips a few weeks ago. They didn’t stand a chance,” Daniels captioned an Instagram picture of him and Bartlett sitting beside a flower garden.
2018
The married couple were nearly the victims of a home robbery in October, but they managed to inadvertently scare the perpetrator away.
“We were asleep and I heard bang, bang, bang. … I lit the light and Bonnie screamed and this person fled and that’s the whole damn story,” Daniels explained during a Good Morning America interview the day after the incident.
“We were stunned,” Bartlett added. “Nothing like that has ever happened.”
2020
The twosome opened up about their relationship during a December interview with Forbes.
“I think our relationship is based on mutual respect and I think she is smarter than me [and a] better actor than me, so I just hang on and try to get along,” Daniels told the outlet.
2021
Daniels shared snaps of him and Bartlett celebrating their granddaughter Grace’s high school graduation.
“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 😉,” he captioned the June Instagram post.
2022
The Emmy winners spoke to Forbes in March in honor of Daniels’ 95th birthday.
When asked about the secret to their long-lasting marriage, the Graduate actor replied, “What you really have to do is learn to respect the other person and their feelings and try to be as easy to live with as you possibly can.”
2023
Bartlett candidly wrote about her and Daniels having “an open marriage at first” in her memoir, Middle of the Rainbow.
Although the Golden Girls alum described the arrangement as “very painful” for both her and her husband, she explained that the experience helped them grow.
“When we got together, I was 18. Bill was my first boyfriend,” she explained. “We just had to go through all that and still, we loved each other very much and always have.”
2024
Daniels and Bartlett celebrated 73 years of wedded bliss in June at their respective ages of 97 and 95.
“It seems like we’re breaking records,” Bartlett told People on June 30, the date of their anniversary. “I mean, we both broke a record when we got the Emmys on the same night for the same show. That was a record breaker, nobody had ever done that. Now, it seems like in Hollywood there are no marriages that are 73 years old, so we seem to break records.”
She added, “We never thought about it at all. It’s very kind of unimportant to us, but it’s important to other people.”
Daniels described his wife as a “very competent woman,” telling People, “She’s smart, and I leave a lot of things up to her. She’s kind of in charge of all the business, all the money, all of that. She takes care of that.”
The couple planned to celebrate their anniversary with family. “It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s family,” Bartlett said. “We’ll have a good time with all of them, all [the] people that we love.”
2025
Before celebrating 74 years of marriage, Daniels shared a glimpse into why his decades-long relationship with Barlett has been so successful.
“Hard to believe this coming Monday marks our 74th wedding anniversary. And yet I shouldn’t be surprised!” Daniels wrote via Instagram on June 25. “Bonnie has been the most brilliant pillar in my life and when I met her, I knew that was it us until the end. Our granddaughter made this t-shirt design in honor of our commitment to each other and it’s currently available in our shop!”
2026
Bartlett further clarified her and Daniels’ “open marriage” dynamic three years after revealing details about their past.
“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,” she told the Daily Mail in May 2026.
She said it was a “non-spoken” rule in their relationship.
“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,” she continued. “Our lives just went on, but we never got unhinged. … But our lives did go in different directions occasionally.”
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