Jerry StillerandAnne Mearahad a love story unlike any other in Hollywood.
Stiller — whodiedat age 92 on May 11, 2020, from natural causes, his sonBen Stillersaidin a tweet— was married to Meara, a fellow performer, from 1954 until herdeath in 2015.
The pair — who shared son Ben and daughter Amy — met in 1953, one year before their wedding. At the time, Stiller had graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in speech and drama, while Meara was working in summer stock (theaters that only present productions in the summer).
“It occurred to us that we were an unlikely couple,” Stillertold PEOPLEin 1977. “People would say to Anne, ‘Heh, you’re married to him?’ I thought we could use it.”
Soon enough, the pair teamed up professionally as the comedy duo Stiller & Meara on sketch shows throughout the 1960s including, most notably,The Ed Sullivan Show.
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“I love Anne, but if I had depended on her in my professional life, I would have lost her as a wife,” Stiller told PEOPLE. “We felt like two guys.”
Recalled Meara, “I didn’t know where the act ended and our marriage began.”
Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara.NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images
Although Stiller and Meara were no longer a dual comedy act on stage, their marriage grew stronger than ever.
“We’ve never really been on the same wavelength until recently,” Meara said in the 1977 interview. “Jerry made an important discovery — that he was an entity.”
“I always wanted things my way,” the actress added. “I used to say everything he did was wrong. It was a marvelous thing to discover I could be wrong too.”
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Stiller and Meara reunited several times onscreen prior to her death, including onArchie Bunker’s Place,as well asThe King of Queens, where their characters married in the series finale. “We did miss our back and forth,” Meara told theLos Angeles Timesin 2010. “I love improvising with him.”
On May 23, 2015, the couple’s 61-year marriage came to a tragic end when Meara died at age 85.
“I miss her,” Stiller said in an interview later that year, according toCountry Living. “There were no walls between us in any way. We both knew what the other was thinking even when we weren’t listening.”
source: people.com
