When All in the Family premiered in January 1971, it blew up the mold of everything that had preceded it. Gone were the days of idealized, squeaky-clean households like the Andersons of Father Knows Best, the Cleavers of Leave It to Beaver or the Stones of The Donna Reed Show. In their place came the Bunkers: Archie, Edith, Gloria and Mike—flawed, funny and, most of all, jarringly real. Archie Bunker was loud, opinionated, proudly out of touch and television’s first regularly-appearing racist. His daughter Gloria was passionately liberal, her husband Michael (aka “Meathead”) even more so. And holding it all together was Edith, the warm, endlessly patient heart of the family.
Week after week, the Bunkers bickered and debated virtually everything, from politics to religion, race and women’s lib. And despite the network’s fears that they would, America couldn’t look away. For all of Archie’s bluster and stubbornness, what made All in the Family endure was its honesty and the reflection of family life that felt uncomfortably familiar.
But while their onscreen lives were a whirlwind of conflict and commentary, the real-life relationships of the show’s stars told very different stories—some lasting, some brief, but all interesting in their own right. Carroll O’Connor, who played the fiery patriarch, was devoted to his wife Nancy for nearly 50 years. Jean Stapleton, the actress behind Edith’s gentle (yet sometimes grating) voice and moral compass, shared a long marriage with her husband William Putch, rooted in a love of the theater. Sally Struthers, who played Gloria, and Rob Reiner, her onscreen husband Mike, each had notable marriages of their own—Struthers with psychiatrist William Rader and Reiner first with Penny Marshall, then with Michele Singer.
As we take a look at the real-life couples behind All in the Family, it’s worth remembering that for all its controversy and cutting-edge commentary, the show was about connection or the challenges of doing so. Television would never be the same again.
