Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz had a secret they kept from everyone. Had word gotten out, they
could have had a scandal on their hands. Well, we now know their secret and soon you will too!
Power couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz — best known for their performances on the sitcom I Love
Lucy — created a Hollywood empire. The iconic comedy ran for an impressive 156 episodes,
eventually becoming one of the most-watched series of all time.
The show, which was the first scripted television program to
be shot on 35-millimeter film in front of a live studio audience, won five Emmys,
including two for Best Situation Comedy in 1953 and 1954. According to Television Academy,
the groundbreaking sitcom received more than 20 nominations throughout its impressive run.
Before their TV fame, Ball was making it in movies while Arnaz was on the road — first
with the Army and then with his conga band. The future sitcom legends tied the knot in 1940,
and they took their marriage to the next level in 1951 when I Love Lucy premiered.
Ball and Arnaz's fairy tale on-camera union continues to live on in people's hearts
and on screens. But there's a secret about their relationship fans might not know about.
Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball first met on set of the 1940 musical
Too Many Girls. Instant sparks flew between the two,
according to Eddie Bracken — a co-star in the film. As Bracken revealed to People:
"It happened so fast it seemed it wouldn't last.
Everybody on the set made bets about how long it would last."
But after less than a year of dating, the pair were married. Although Ball and Arnaz
divorced in 1960, a love and mutual respect remained between the two until their deaths.
Arnaz died of lung cancer in 1986 and Ball died in 1989 of a heart attack.
Daughter Lucie Arnaz joked to Closer Weekly in 2019 that:
"They had a great divorce."
But the iconic couple may have lied on their marriage certificate. According to Us Weekly,
Ball was six years older than Arnaz. An older woman marrying a younger man would have been
taboo in the '50s, so in order to avoid a media scandal, Ball and Arnaz both listed
their birth years as 1914 on their marriage certificate. In reality, she was born in 1911,
while he was born in 1917. Ball was 29 and Arnaz was 23 when they officially tied the knot.
Desi Arnaz once said he had no idea how the iconic sitcom couple ended up together,
noting how very different they were.
"We're gonna run this house like we do in Cuba,
where the man is the master and the woman does what she's told. Si, senor."
In his autobiography, A Book,
Arnaz wrote that they would, quote, "love furiously and fight furiously."
Lucie Arnaz told Closer Weekly:
"If their parents can't get along and that happens, then kids should be so lucky to
have a divorce like my mom and my dad did, because they were kind, they never said bad
words about each other in front of their children and they stayed friends til the day they died."
After her divorce from Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball wasn't interested in finding a new man, but
she had a change of heart when she met and later married Gary Morton in 1961. In her autobiography
Love, Lucy, Ball wrote that Morton changed her mind about finding love again with his,
"natural humor of someone who loves to laugh and wants everyone to laugh with him."
In 1963, Arnaz married Edith Mack Hirsch, and he stayed with her until her death from cancer
in 1985. But Arnaz revealed in his final years that his love for his first wife,
Ball, remained true. In the book Desilu: The Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz,
written by Coyne Steven Sanders and Tom Gilbert, Arnaz explained:
"'I Love Lucy' was never just a title."
Although they both remarried, it seems their iconic love was something special
for its two-decade run. In 1991, I Love Lucy director William Asher told People
that he truly believed the two shared a deep and special love.
He also claimed that neither Ball nor Arnaz "ever got over it."
"Honey, I miss it everyday of my life, but I can't go back, you can't top what we've done."
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