The Boys : A Memoir of Hollywood and Family(93)

Though I proclaimed my love for her within weeks of our first date, Cheryl was slower to make a definitive declaration—or maybe she was just more sensible than I was. In our first year together, when I ventured an “I love you,” she responded, “I really like you, but I don’t think I can love you yet.”

A few months later, we had graduated to Cheryl saying, “I think I might love you.” Once we had been together a year, I tried it again. We were making out in the VW Bug.

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you, too,” she responded.

Not a proactive declaration, but . . . she said the words!

“I’ve known that for a long time,” I said.

We played out a similar process in terms of agreeing to get married. I popped the question, after a fashion, when we were still in high school, saying, “I think we should get married.” She politely put me off, telling me it was way too early to talk about stuff like that.

I tried again a couple of years later, when she was at Valley College. Didn’t get on bended knee, just floated the idea: “What if we—” She cut me off. She told me she needed to focus on getting her credits so she could transfer to Cal State-Northridge.

By the spring of 1975, we had both turned twenty-one. Cheryl had successfully transferred, so that was no longer a card she could play. And the chaotic, boy-band-like scenes that I had experienced doing promo for Happy Days drove home how much I truly loved her. Being on the road presented all manner of opportunities for casual flirtations, which I indulged, and casual sex, which I avoided. There was no one else I wanted.

Still, I was only twenty-one. My parents had gotten married young, but this was a different era. I was momentarily paralyzed with self-doubt. So I presented my dilemma to Anson. “Cheryl is the one for me, but I don’t know,” I said. “Do you—do you think I should get married?”

Anson had been my partner on the road. He had partaken in the opportunities that came his way while I moped in my hotel room, pining for Cheryl. He couldn’t help but laugh.

“Howard, you’re married already!” he said. “What are you waiting for?”

Thus emboldened, I resolved to propose—again.

I never fully thought it out. We were simply driving to a movie, both of us in casual clothes. Smooth guy that I was, I chose a moment when we were on an on-ramp to the Ventura Freeway to say, “Do you want to get married?”

“Really?” said Cheryl. In my peripheral vision, I could see that she was smiling.

“Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been really thinking about it,” I said. “I think it’s time. So: Do you want to get married?”

“Okay,” she said tentatively.

We drove smiling in silence for a few minutes. Then Cheryl piped up.

“Does this mean we’re engaged, Ron?”

“Yeah, I think that’s what it means.”

“Okay!” Cheryl replied.

It was probably the most romantic proposal and acceptance ever to take place on a Southern California on-ramp. We decided to bag the movie. Instead, we turned around and headed back to my place in Glendale, where we made love.


OUR WEDDING TOOK place on June 7, 1975. We were married at Magnolia Park United Methodist Church in Burbank. The officiant was a man named Bobs Watson. Bobs was a former child actor who had appeared with Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney in the 1938 movie Boys Town and then, in adulthood, became an ordained Methodist minister. The resonance of being married by a former child actor was too good not to take advantage of.

Mom and Dad didn’t understand our hurry to get married, but they were by then fans of Cheryl and understood that our love was real. And they knew they had no standing to raise objections to getting married at a young age; they were Exhibit A of its benefits!

Ours was as low-budget and rudimentary a wedding as you could ever picture. The total cost was $800, including the price of Cheryl’s dress. We had no reception, just a simple ceremony followed by cake and nonalcoholic punch in the church’s courtyard. Cheryl and I hung around for twenty minutes to pose for pictures and cut the cake before a smaller group of friends and family migrated to my parents’ house in Toluca Lake, five minutes away. Mom had made champagne punch and put up some helium balloons. That was it.

Aunt Julia, now in a wheelchair, came all the way from Duncan, her hair as blue and tall as ever. Granddad Beckenholdt, my last surviving grandparent, did not make the trip, but he had given our union his blessing the previous Christmas. As a surprise to Dad, Clint and I had pooled some of our money to secretly fly Granddad out—his first and only trip to California, which he very reluctantly signed on for.

We built up the suspense to Dad like the actors we were. “Your Christmas present this year, Dad—you won’t believe it,” we kept saying. “It’s going to blow . . . your . . . mind.”

“What is it?” Dad asked.

“Oh, it’s big,” I said. “But it’ll fit. You’ll appreciate it.”

I was playing chess with Dad by the fireplace when Clint returned from the airport with our guest in tow. Granddad wore an old sport coat and a dress shirt buttoned to the collar—a farmer dressed for church. He walked in and silently shook Dad’s hand. It was the only time that I ever saw Dad stunned and at a loss for words.

As reticent as Granddad was, he was taken with our setup on Clybourn Avenue. About half an hour into his visit, having had a look around at the four bedrooms, the living room, the dining room, the den, and the spacious yard, he said, “Well, Harold, it looks like the show bidness has been pretty good to you after all.” It was the biggest affirmation that Dad ever got from his father.