Hollywood’s longest married couple talk candidly about their extramarital activities as husband and wife.

William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett clarify ‘open marriage’ remarks ahead of 75th wedding anniversary: We ‘did go in different directions’

Hollywood's longest married couple talk candidly about their extramarital activities as husband and wife.

By Kathleen Perricone

May 18, 2026 6:25 p.m. ET

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Bonnie Bartlett and William Daniels. Credit:

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- William Daniels, 99, and Bonnie Bartlett, 96, are clarifying previous remarks about their "open marriage" as they prepare to celebrate their 75th anniversary.

- "We never got unhinged, but our lives did go in different directions occasionally," said the Emmy-winning *St. Elsewhere* actress.

- Bartlett dropped the bombshell in 2023 that she and Daniels had been with other people early in their marriage, but "that didn't work well."

*Boy Meets World* star William Daniels, 99, and his wife Bonnie Bartlett, 96, were once meeting different people outside of their relationship.

As Hollywood's longest married couple prepares to celebrate their 75th wedding anniversary, they're now talking candidly about the time they had "a little bit of an open marriage" not long after they said "I do" in 1951.

"There was never any discussion as to what we were going to do," explained Bartlett, who won an Emmy for her role as Ellen Craig on *St. Elsewhere*, to the *Daily Mail*. "It was non-spoken. 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."

Emmy winners William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett in 1986.

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But it wasn't just her husband, who famously portrayed beloved teacher Mr. Feeny on *Boy Meets World* for seven seasons in the 1990s.

"So there have been times, yeah, both of us, on both sides," confessed Bartlett. "We never got unhinged, but our lives did go in different directions occasionally."

Seventy-five years later, Daniels insists his heart only belongs to his bride — who he married a second time, on television, during Bartlett's five-episode arc on *Boy Meets World*.

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"I wouldn't be with anyone else in my life than this woman sitting next to me," the actor gushed during their joint interview with the *Daily Mail*.

Bartlett, who also starred on *Little House on the Prairie*, first dropped the extramarital bombshell in 2023, while promoting her memoir *Middle of the Rainbow: How a Wife, Mother and Daughter Managed to Find Herself and Win Two Emmys*.

"I guess it was a little bit of an open marriage at first, but that was very painful," she told Fox News Digital. "That didn't work well. And it was a time when people were doing that. 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, you know – very free. But I don't know if there was a lack of commitment a little bit, and that's not good."

William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett on 'Boy Meets World' in 1999.

ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty

As the two actors, who met as students at Northwestern University, focused on building their Hollywood careers, they found themselves spending "a lot" of time apart. "We didn't think we'd make it," Bartlett admitted to PEOPLE in 2024, "but we did."

A decade into their marriage, Daniels and Bartlett welcomed a son, William Jr., who tragically passed away 24 hours after his birth.

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The couple went on to adopt two more boys, Michael and Robert, and the joy of parenthood ultimately became "the best thing in our marriage," said the actress. "After great pain and sadness, and then we got these two wonderful boys, and they have been a joy the whole marriage. I can't imagine life without them."

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