National icon Betty White passed away at 99 on Friday, just shy of her centennial birthday. Her agent and close friend Jeff Witjas told People that White believed that upon her death, she would reunite with her late husband, Allen Ludden.
After two failed marriages, White met Ludden while appearing as a guest on Password in 1961, which he hosted. He proposed just weeks after they met, but she turned him down until Easter of 1963. They married that same year.
Even after they married, the actress referred to her husband as “the love of her life.” “They’re like newlyweds,” producer Lin Bolen told the outlet in the ’70s. “When they can’t be together at work, they call each other from their dressing rooms.”
White said the key to their lasting relationship was enthusiasm.
“The secret to our marriage was enthusiasm,” she said. “When I knew Allen was coming home, I would freshen my makeup and put on a new blouse.”
Allen was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer in the late ’70s. While he was sick, she would rehearse for The Mary Tyler Moore Show and then head straight to the hospital.
He died in 1981, and at that point, they had been married 18 years. White never remarried after he passed away.
“She keeps a photo of him on her bedside table and blows him a kiss every morning,” said longtime executive personal assistant Kiersten Mikelas to People recently. “At night, when she opens the shutters, she blows a kiss to him up in the sky.”
In 2011, Anderson Cooper asked White why she never remarried, and she replied, “I had the love of my life. If you’ve had the best, who needs the rest?”
