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Darren McGavin met his wife in bed
"I thought, well maybe I ought to ask her out to dinner?"
Whenever a new couple is introduced in a crowd, the conversation naturally drifts towards one topic. "How did you two meet?" It's an innocent enough question, and it typically leads to a cute, bubbly answer. It's a great insight into the two halves of the pair, as maybe the encounter had something to do with their common interests. Sometimes, it's a mundane, run-of-the-mill story. But other times, the answer is a bit more revealing.
That was the case for Darren McGavin, longtime actor and star of Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Or at least that was the case for his third marriage. In a June 1974 interview with The Atlanta Constitution, McGavin took a routinely asked question and wove a tale of intrigue.
"I was going through a miserable divorce, and I disliked ladies an awful lot. I was doing that series, The Outsider, and she was cast as a girl, which was good—and we have this dumb, stupid thing of shooting out of context.
"I got a scene in which I grab the girl and throw her on the bed. We finished rehearsal and the director says this is Darren McGavin, meet Kathie Browne. We say, 'Hi.' Then I tie her up and carry her off—and she felt awful good.
"I thought, well maybe I ought to ask her out to dinner?"
This lurid encounter led to the longest relationship of Darren McGavin's life. He was married to Kathie Browne from 1969 until her death in 2003. McGavin passed away three years later.
In addition to her appearance in The Outsider, the prolific Ms. Kathie Browne appeared in four episodes of Perry Mason. She played a different character in each. Notably, she played Deela in the 1968 Star Trek episode "The Wink of an Eye," wherein she and her hyper-accelerated alien brethren overtake the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise.
Browne also had guest appearances on The Wild Wild West, Wanted: Dead or Alive, The Love Boat, Have Gun – Will Travel, Mannix, The Virginian, The Big Valley, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Rawhide, Wagon Train, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
McGavin was one half of a famous onscreen couple alongside Melinda Dillon when he played the Old Man in A Christmas Story.
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I wasn't trying to ruffle your feathers, make you cackle or give you the bird by any means... Catching the MeTV writers in a goof is something to crow about, and the way we peck at them, by now you'd think they'd have learned. So don't be chicken, make sure their errors come home to roost and you'll still be the best in the barnyard!
