Inside Betty White and Allen Ludden’s Golden Love Story

They were married on June 14, 1963, at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, honeymooned in Laguna Beach, California, and settled for a time in Chappaqua, New York. White admitted she was nervous about becoming stepmother to then 14-year-old Ludden. -years son David and girls Martha, 13 and Sarah, 10, but the family of five, plus poodles Willie and Emma, ​​lived quite harmoniously apart from the usual growing pains of adolescence.

When asked later in life if she regretted not having children herself, White said she was “lucky” to be this trio’s stepmother – and that she had no regrets. “I’m so compulsive about things, I know if I had ever gotten pregnant, of course that would have been my whole focus,” she said. Katie Couric for CBS News in 2012. “But I didn’t choose to have kids because I’m focused on my career. And I just don’t think, as compulsive as I am, that I could handle both.”

Ludden would leave love notes around the house for White to find, one of which allowed him to finally see, no pun intended, that it was time to get his eyes checked. In his 2011 book If you ask me (and of course you won’t), she shared that one night he left a card under his pillow that said on the front, “If you can’t see, I love you…” and on the inside said, “SQUIRT!”

She had a good laugh, but also made an appointment with the eye doctor the next day. And she kept every one of those notes.

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