Sally Struthers Reveals She Once Dated Elvis Presley ‘for a While’: ‘Nicest Man I Ever Met’

Sally Struthers couldn’t help falling for Elvis Presley.

The All in the Family actress, 77, revealed in a new interview that she once dated The King “for a while,” and that she has nothing but fond memories of their time together.

“That was fun,” she said in the Jan. 13 episode of the Let’s Talk About That! With Larry Saperstein and Jacob Bellotti podcast. “He was probably the nicest man I ever met. He was so polite and so kind and soft-hearted that you just couldn’t believe anybody that was that beautiful had never caught on that they were beautiful and gotten obsessed with themselves.”

She continued, “He was just all about kindness to everyone, which is pretty great.”

Struthers did not share when she and Presley dated, though she married psychiatrist William C. Rader in 1977, the same year Presley died at age 42. She and Rader divorced in 1983 after welcoming a daughter, Samantha.

Presley, meanwhile, divorced wife Priscilla Presley in 1973 after six years of marriage. Over the years, he had romances with costar Ann-Margret, Linda Thompson and Ginger Alden, to whom he was engaged when he died.

Elsewhere on the podcast, Struthers spoke less glowingly of the late All in the Family showrunner Norman Lear, as well as The Golden Girls star Betty White.

The actress claimed that White, who died in 2021 at age 99, once fat-shamed her while they were working on a TV game show pilot together, chastising Struthers for reaching for a cookie.

“She said, in front of everyone, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you, dear. You don’t need a cookie,’” she recalled. “Totally fat-shamed me in front of the rest of the people in the room. And I thought, ‘Gosh, that’s not nice.’”

Struthers also alleged that she was excluded from dinners hosted by Lear, who died at 101 in 2023, while All in the Family was on the air.

“All those years on the show, Norman and his wife would have dinner parties,” she said. Although the other stars of the show — Carroll O’Connor, Jean Stapleton and Rob Reiner — and their spouses were often invited, Struthers claimed, “I wasn’t, in eight years, invited to his home. It didn’t feel good.”

The A Man on the Inside actress also said that after five seasons, she even sought legal counsel to help her leave the show, but after spending $40,000 on legal fees during arbitration, she lost.