Actors and married couple William Daniels, 99, and Bonnie Bartlett, 96, have opened up about their “open marriage” ahead of their 75th anniversary.
Daniels is best known for playing Mr. Fenny in the 1990s sitcom Boy Meets World. Bartlett starred in television shows Little House on the Prairie and St. Elsewhere as well as playing Mr. Fenny’s eventual onscreen wife in Boy Meet World. She also played the mother in the Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger film Twins.
Bartlett talked publicly in 2023 about having an open marriage in their early wedded years. Closing in on the couple’s June 20 anniversary, she clarified the situation in May 18th interview with the Daily Mail.
“It’s funny, the press will pick up on something and make more of it than it was,” she told 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.”
Related Video
“It was non-spoken,” Bartlett said about the open marriage. “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.”
She said, “there have been times” both of them stepped outside their marriage.
“Our lives just went on, but we never got unhinged . . . Our lives did go in different directions occasionally,” she said in the recent interview.
In the early years of their marriage, it was not uncommon to have an open marriage, she noted in the 2023 discussion on the topic. “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,” and people were “very free.”
In her 2023 memoir, Bartlett discussed an affair she had around 1959 and infidelity on Daniel’s part in the 1970s that left her devastated. In discussing their situation in 2023, Bartlett described the open marriage as “very painful,” saying “didn’t work well.”
After Daniel’s affair, she “could no longer tolerate any kind of open marriage,” Bartlett wrote.
The couple has the distinction of being one of Hollywood’s longest running marriages.
The two portrayed each other’s spouses three times on projects and won Emmy Awards on the same night in 1986 for their roles on St. Elsewhere, in which they played a married couple.
