William and Bonnie Daniels Toast Their Anniversary by Recreating First Date from 75 Years Ago (Exclusive)
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The 'Boy Meets World' and 'St. Elsewhere' stars celebrated their 72nd wedding anniversary on Friday as she exclusively tells PEOPLE about his "sense of romance" and he remembers how she caught his eye
Michael Daniels
Williams Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett Daniels have plenty of reason to celebrate!
The 96-year-old actor, beloved for portraying Boy Meets World's Mr. Feeny, and fellow his St. Elsewhere alum wife, 94, paid a special visit to one of their favorite spots in Los Angeles to ring in their 72nd wedding anniversary on Friday.
And while Art's Deli in Studio City may be thousands of miles away from the place where they first sipped coffee as students at Northwestern University, Bonnie tells PEOPLE that the restaurant is "a place that we love to go, and that's the kind of place that we went to when we were dating."
Michael Daniels
The couple's first unofficial date took place when Bonnie caught her future husband's eye — or his ear, as it were — during drama class. William, who grew up in Brooklyn, New York, had Broadway experience from a few years and had matriculated to Northwestern on the GI Bill after serving in the Army during World War II.
"I was pretty cocky," he recalls. "The teacher was asking us to read because he was casting a play. ... I listened to these other kids audition, reading from a script, and I thought they were terrible. I thought, 'I don't think I want to be in this turkey,' until I heard a voice in the back. I looked back, and there sat this blonde who obviously was a good actress."
He approached Bonnie after class to ask her out — but it took confidence and persistence because her first answer was, "You're too short." (She clarifies that she meant "I'm too tall for you.")
Michael Daniels
William continues, "Now, it turns out I much later found out she'd been following me around campus, unbeknownst to me, because she heard I'd been on Broadway. So this business about 'you're too short' was a lot of bull."
Bonnie interjects, "Well, I was good at pushing men away. But also, I loved his leather jacket. Oh, I loved his leather jacket. It was really exciting."
After their first coffee rendezvous, the couple had an official first date on the town in Chicago, taking in a show and enjoying "a lovely dinner," says Bonnie. "I ordered something very cheap and he had a steak, and that was the last he ever had any money. That was it. He spent it all that night, and he didn't have a penny after that."
Michael Daniels
Despite the couple's impressively long relationship, Bonnie doesn't exactly airbrush their origin story: "That I'd spend my life with him, that never occurred to me. There was no plan. We were actors and trying to get work, and we liked being together."
With Bonnie's help, they finished college in three years ("If I hadn't met Bonnie, I don't think I would have gotten through," admits William). "And when we got married, I thought we just got married so that we could have sex really," shares Bonnie. "We got married for the expediency of it. This was not a romantic thing. It was probably as much mental and sexual. It was just a meeting of the minds and a meeting of the bodies."
Looking back seven and a half decades later, she says, "I never expected it to be a marvelous, wonderful thing. I had no anticipation of that at all, and it just happened."
That said, William's "sense of romance" also made an impression on Bonnie, who says she's "not at all like the usual romantic lady who wants all this fuss and all that stuff." But when he "brought me a single rose [when we started dating], I was very impressed with that," she affirms. "He's much more romantic than I am, much more."
William chimes in, "I have the ability to make you laugh."
"Yes," agrees Bonnie, "that has been very important. He still makes me laugh."
Seventy-two years later, they've laughed, celebrated, won a combined four Emmys and even surprised a few people with revelations about their enduring love. (Bonnie released her memoir Middle of the Rainbow earlier this year, and William penned his own autobiography — There I Go Again: How I Came to Be Mr. Feeny, John Adams, Dr. Craig, KITT, and Many Others — in 2017.)
Related: William Daniels' Celebrated Career and Life in Photos
Most importantly, though, they've found family in each other and in their two sons: Robert, 57, and Michael, 59 — who followed his parents into the theater business and happened to serve as photographer for their anniversary date. (The couple also had a son William Jr. who died 24 hours after his birth in 1961.)
"Our boys have meant the world to us," Bonnie says. "I'm not sure we'd have stayed together all these years, but our mutual adoration for the boys, Michael and Robert, they just continue daily to be wonderful young men. Now they're middle-aged men. They just are wonderful. I have absolutely no complaints. They're just terrific, and we love them so much. We're so thrilled that we were able to adopt these two wonderful boys, just thrilled."
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As they mark another year, the Daniels are looking ahead to the joyous moments they have in store.
"I think we will have to plan some kind of a big celebration along the way here somewhere," says Bonnie. "I don't know if we'll wait for the 75th, but maybe we'll have a big celebration next year, have all the family come from all over the country."
She adds, "We're so lucky because the important things have all been good — us together, the boys, the children, our grandchildren. Everything's good."
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