Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo

Born in 1911, Lucille Ball began her career as a model in the late 1920s, eventually going on to perform on Broadway and as a chorus girl in films before meeting Arnaz and co-creating I Love Lucy.

The couple met on the set of the film Too Many Girls in 1940. They quickly fell in love and eloped later that year. As Too Many Girls costar Eddie Bracken told PEOPLE in 1996, many felt the relationship wouldn’t last. “You could tell the sparks were flying with Lucy,” he said. “It happened so fast it seemed it wouldn’t last. Everybody on the set made bets about how long it would last.”

But it did, and the couple’s union marked the beginning of one of Hollywood’s most iconic relationships. A decade into their marriage, the two decided to join forces again and created the beloved sitcom.

The show centered on Lucy, a housewife who desperately wanted to be a star and often schemed ways to appear alongside her bandleader husband.

Ball and Arnaz had two children during their real-life marriage: daughter Lucie Arnaz, born on July 17, 1951, and son Desi Arnaz Jr., born on Jan. 19, 1953. Their children became an integral part of their lives and appeared on I Love Lucy spinoffs, Here’s Lucy and The Lucy Show.

In 1962, Ball became the first woman to run a major television studio with Desilu Productions, also founded with Arnaz. The studio produced many popular television programs, including Star Trek.

Despite their love for one another, Ball and Arnaz’s marriage was not without its difficulties, and the couple divorced in 1960.

Following their divorce, both Ball and Arnaz moved on to new relationships — Ball to comedian Gary Morton (whom she married in 1961), and Arnaz to Edith Mack Hirsch (whom he married in 1963). Despite their new marriages, Ball and Arnaz remained connected through their children, Lucie and Desi Jr., and their shared legacy.

Throughout her storied career, Ball would be nominated for 13 Primetime Emmy Awards (five of which she won) and receive a slew of other accolades, including two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Ball died of cardiac arrest on April 26, 1989.

Desi Arnaz as Ricky Ricardo

Born to Cuban nobility in 1917, Desi Arnaz’s family was forced to flee the country for Miami following The Cuban Revolution of 1933. Following high school, he joined a band and ultimately launched his own project —  the Desi Arnaz Orchestra. After the group became a a hit in New York City’s nightlife scene, Arnaz was cast in the Broadway version of the play Too Many Girls.

One year later, he was cast in the film version, where he met his future wife, Ball.

In the early 1940s, Arnaz was drafted into the Army, but he ended up being classified for limited service due to a knee injury. Instead, he served for more than two years as part of United Service Organization (USO) programs at the Birmingham General Army Hospital in the San Fernando Valley, where he entertained injured soldiers. Post-military, Arnaz went back into music before I Love Lucy was born.

While their demanding careers are said to have often kept them apart, it was Arnaz’s struggles with alcohol abuse and supposed infidelity that ultimately added the most strain to their relationship, according to Ball.

“It got so bad that I thought it would be better for us not to be together,” Ball said in court.

Bart Andrews, biographer of four books on Ball and I Love Lucy, told PEOPLE in 1991 that Ball told him by 1956 it “wasn’t even a marriage anymore.”

“They were just going through a routine for the children,” he added. “She told me that for the last five years of their marriage, it was ‘just booze and broads.’ ”

But even after their divorce, the two remained close.

As Love Lucy director William Asher told PEOPLE in 1991, “Maybe I’m the romantic, but there was a great, great love there, there really was. Desi was very unhappy about the breakup, and I think she was too. I don’t think either one of them ever got over it.”

In an interview with PEOPLE in February 2022, the couple’s daughter Lucie recalled witnessing her parents’ final goodbye, as Arnaz was dying of lung cancer and spoke to Ball on the phone.

“I could hear her say, ‘I love you.’ She said it five times in a row. And he was nodding and saying, ‘I love you too, honey,’ ” Lucie said. “He died in my arms. None of us realized it at the time, but the day they last spoke was Nov. 30, their wedding anniversary.”

She added, “They did the show so they could be together. They gave the country this wonderful creation. But they never got what they wanted — to stay together. They loved each other until the end.”

Arnaz died of lung cancer on Dec. 2, 1986.

Vivian Vance as Ethel Mertz

Vivian Vance was born in Kansas in 1909 and came to acting in the 1930s, when she performed in stage plays in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Eventually, she moved to New York, landing roles on Broadway before moving to California to work in film.

Vance was suggested for the role of landlady Ethel Mertz (who would often concoct schemes with the titular character) by director Marc Daniels. She ultimately won the role, and the rest is history. She would go on to win the 1953 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress for her role as Ethel.

Two decades after the show aired, Ball and Vance connected for one final time, as Vance was dying of bone cancer.

Paige Peterson, who’d grown close to Vance after the actress rented her mother’s home in Belvedere, recounted their final meeting with PEOPLE in 2020, while discussing her book, Growing Up Belvedere-Tiburon.

“You could hear them laughing, and towards the end there was a lot of sobbing,” Peterson said of Vance and Ball. “It was an amazing thing to witness. The love of these two women.”

Of that day in 1979, Peterson remembered, “We had brought Viv down and she was lying on the couch in the living room. They ate lunch and they talked and talked. Viv knew she was dying.” (The breast cancer she had been diagnosed with in 1973 had metastasized into bone cancer.)

Peterson, who was in an adjacent room in case Vance needed her, said of Ball: “The pain on her face shook me to my core. She was in tears. She couldn’t speak.”

Vance died a few days later, on Aug. 17, at 70 years old.

Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill, the daughter of Luci and Desi, told PEOPLE her mother “cried about losing Viv for months after that. Viv was, in many ways, like a sister to my mother. She could talk to Mom like nobody else, and I don’t think my mother could confide in many people the way she would with Viv.”

William Frawley as Fred Mertz

Born in 1887 in Iowa, William Frawley began his entertainment career in vaudeville, first performing alongside his brother and later, alongside his wife, Edna Louise Broedt, per Mental Floss.

The outlet reports that Frawley signed a contract with Paramount Studios in 1916, to appear in silent films and, over the next 35 years, appeared as “a beloved character actor and a familiar face in more than 100 films.”

Among his credits are the 1947 Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street and the 1947 Charlie Chaplin film Monsieur Verdoux.

And though his career was prolific, Frawley was notoriously difficult to work with and was fired from some of his projects to his unfriendly demeanor.

Rob Edelman, who co-authored the book Meet the Mertzes, said in an earlier interview with the Television Academy that it was Arnaz who sat Frawley down and told him to shape up if he wanted to land the role of Fred Mertz.

“Desi told him, ‘No drinking, no games, or you’re out of here.’ At that point, Frawley was very set in his ways, and he was not really a people person. But he never missed a performance,” Edelman said.

Among those with whom he tangled was his co-star on I Love Lucy, Vance. The two played Lucy and Desi’s landlords, who often fought on the show — but those fights reportedly spilled into real life, too.

As Gregg Oppenheimer, son of the late Jess Oppenheimer, the show’s producer and head writer, explained to the Television Academy in an interview, Vance was “bothered” by their 22-year age gap.

“She told people, ‘How will anyone believe I’m married to that old man?’” he said, noting that Frawley “was insulted,” but “spent most of his time in his dressing room, anyway, listening to the baseball game.”

Frawley died in March 1966 of a heart attack.

Keith Thibodeaux as Little Ricky

Born in 1950, Keith Thibodeaux is the last living regular cast member from I Love Lucy. He got his start in show business at just four years old, appearing on the Horace Heidt variety show before being cast in Lucy at age 5.

He appeared as Luci and Desi’s son and was billed as Richard Keith on the show because his Cajun-French last name was deemed too difficult to pronounce by Arnaz.

In a 2015 interview with ABC News, Thibodeaux said that “Lucy was naturally very motherly to me and Desi kind of made me feel at ease—that was his role.”

He added: “They were very generous towards me and I was best friends with their children. Whenever I was over there, and Desi would give his kids gifts and he’d never leave me out — whether it was customized bowling balls or L.A. Rams jerseys, he’d give me the same thing.”

Speaking of his 1955 audition for the show, Thibodeaux said, “I walked on the set and there was Lucy, she was standing there and she was looking at me. She said, ‘Okay he’s cute, but what does he do?’ My dad said, ‘Well, he plays the drums,’ and she said, ‘Oh, come on. I can’t believe that.’ “

“Then, she says, ‘Look, we have a drum set over there, go ahead and let him play.’ Eventually, Desi Arnaz himself came over and started jamming with me on the drums, and then he kind of stood up and said, ‘Well, I think we found Little Ricky.’ “