These two actors from The Dick Van Dyke Show got married in real life
The second episode of the fifth season of The Dick Van Dyke Show has a simple yet amusing premise. Called “A Farewell to Writing,” it revolves around Rob’s attempts to finish the novel he has always wanted to write. Actually, it mostly involves Rob trying to start the novel he has always wanted to write!
He gets distracted by every little thing, including gossip between Laura and Millie and the sound of the fridge defrosting. Laura suggests that he go off by himself where there will be no disruptions and he can work in peace.
Rob agrees and decides to stay in a friend’s secluded cabin. A local man, Horace, lets Rob into the cabin, making sure he’s not a “weirdo” like the nudist neighbors up the hill. Rob thinks he can finally get to work but finds even more ways to get distracted in the cabin than he did at home!
Character actor Guy Raymond plays the friendly but suspicious Horace. In addition to The Dick Van Dyke Show, Raymond was in Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone, Dennis the Menace, Green Acres, The Virginian, Mannix and The Beverly Hillbillies – just to name a few. He also played the man behind the bar who gets talked into buying a cute little alien fur ball at the beginning of the Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles.”
While Raymond was in just one episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, and only in scenes with Van Dyke himself, he would later become very connected to the show via his personal life. In 1969, four years after he appeared on the show, he married a member of the cast!
Ann Morgan Guilbert, who plays the Petries’ friend and neighbor, Millie Helper, divorced her first husband in 1966. Guy Raymond’s first wife passed away a year later. Two years after that, both actors knew they were ready for a second marriage and decided to tie the knot.
Raymond and Guilbert were married for almost 30 years until Raymond’s death in 1997.
Though they probably didn’t know it, “A Farewell to Writing” brought these two future lovebirds together – if not in the same scene then at least in the same end credits!
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