Al Schultz, who had a long career as a TV makeup artist for beloved sitcoms and was married to Vicki Lawrence for five decades, has passed away.

Schultz started his career in the 1960s, working on NBC shows like Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In and Hollywood Squares. 

In 1968, a happenstance meeting sparked a relationship that would change Schultz's life. The Makeup Artists Union sent him to CBS Television City, where he walked by Carol Burnett's dressing room. Schultz caught Burnett's eye, and a lifelong friendship was born. 

Burnett made Schultz the head of makeup on The Carol Burnett Show, where he made up not only Burnett and the regular cast, but the revolving door of celebrities that guested on the program. It was while Schultz was working on the show that he met Vicki Lawrence, and the two fell in love.

Lawrence said in an interview with The Archive of American Television that it was Schultz who encouraged her to "unleash the monster" of Mama's character in the now-famous "Elephant Story" blooper, where Lawrence's Mama Harper snaps back at Tim Conway's rambling stories about circus elephants. When Lawrence complained to Schultz, who was doing her makeup, that Conway always got away with changing the script during filming, he simply told her to "get 'em."

Schultz, as head of West Coast makeup at CBS, also worked on such classic shows like All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Good Times, Maude, and The Sonny and Cher Show.

By the '80s, Schultz decided to step back from the makeup chair in order to spend more time with Lawrence and their children, Garrett and Courtney.

Both Schultz and Lawrence took efforts to prioritize family and the work-life balance that can so easily become skewed in Hollywood. "It can get to where we're working too much together and not playing enough," Lawrence said in an interview with The Sacramento Bee. "We have to keep reminding each other to play more, and we have to put down a mandate that 'we won't talk business tonight.'"

Lawrence and Schultz would have celebrated their 50th anniversary this November. Schultz was 82.