Inside the “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” Cast Lives, Nearly 50 Years Since the Series Ended

The iconic CBS sitcom won 29 Emmys during its seven-season run from 1970 to 1977

NEED TO KNOW

• The Mary Tyler Moore Show ran on CBS for seven seasons from 1970 to 1977
• The beloved sitcom was one of the most influential shows of all time and had a lasting impact on women
• Starring late actress Mary Tyler Moore, Gavin MacLeod and Ed Asner, the series won 29 Emmy Awards

Despite ending nearly five decades ago, The Mary Tyler Moore Show remains one of the most influential shows of all time.

The beloved CBS sitcom starred the late Mary Tyler Moore, who could turn the world on with her smile, as Mary Richards, a producer for WJM-TV in Minneapolis.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show ran for seven seasons from 1970 to 1977 and won a whopping 29 Emmy Awards — a record at the time.

"The producers and writers wanted to go on to other things. And at the time, it was incumbent on me to profess absolute belief that this was the smart thing to do to go off while we were ahead and on top, but I was crumbling inside," Moore told the Television Academy in 1977 of the series ending. "I didn't want it to end. Again, it was my family."

Following her life alongside her friends and coworkers in the newsroom, Moore ushered in a new era for women on primetime TV. With a massive feminist legacy, the half-hour sitcom centering on a single, independent working woman wasn't commonplace on the small screen at the time.

It has since gained new fans in syndication and via streaming. The show also spawned three official spinoffs throughout the 1970s and 1980s based on its primary characters, including Rhoda, Phyllis and Lou Grant, before launching the 2000 reunion TV movie Mary and Rhoda.

Moore, along with the rest of the cast, made it after all. Look back on where their lives took them after The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended.

01 of 09

Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Richards

Moore began leading The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1970, four years after her starring role as Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show. The show was produced by her company MTM Enterprises, which was behind many successful TV series, including The Bob Newhart Show, Remington Steele and St. Elsewhere, as well as the Mary Tyler Moore Show spinoffs Rhoda, Phyllis and Lou Grant.

Her TV alter ego, Mary Richards, wasn't that different from the real Moore.

Portraying a single woman happened, in part, because she didn't want to play another wife as she did in the role of Laura, and CBS didn't want the titular character to be divorced.

"I never went the actors' studio route. I'm not an actress who can create a character. I play me. I'm scared that if I tamper with it, I might ruin it," she told PEOPLE in 1974.

Moore ended up with eight Emmy nominations and four wins for her work on the series. After The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended in 1977, she moved to New York City, where she found success on Broadway in shows like Whose Life Is It Anyway?, for which she won a special Tony Award, and Noises Off. MTM Enterprises also produced the Tony-winning revival Joe Egg.

In 1981, she received an Oscar nomination and won a Golden Globe for her role in the Robert Redford-directed 1980 film Ordinary People.

Moore was first married at age 18 to producer Richard Meeker. The couple wed in 1955 and welcomed son Richie the following year, but divorced in 1961. In the fall of 1980, Moore's son Richie died in a gun accident at age 24. 

She was married to her second husband, Grant Tinker, from 1962 to 1981. During their marriage, after a miscarriage, she learned she was diabetic. Moore also struggled with alcoholism. Among her health ailments over the years was also a meningioma, a slow-growing benign brain tumor she had surgery for in 2011.

In 1982, Moore was visiting her mother in the hospital when she met Dr. Robert Levine, 18 years her junior. They wed in November 1983 and were together until her death.

Levine encouraged Moore to go to rehab at the Betty Ford Center. She remained sober for the rest of her life and spoke publicly about diabetes and alcoholism. The couple also founded the Mary Tyler Moore Vision Initiative to prevent diabetic retinal disease, which she ultimately suffered from.

Moore later guest-starred on The Ellen Show, That '70s Show , Lipstick Jungle and Hot in Cleveland. The latter, which featured her Mary Tyler Moore Show costar Betty White, was her final credited role.

In 1995, she published a memoir, After All, in which she dived into her past.

She told PEOPLE at the time, "To be able to write about these things now opens up chambers that aren't well-lit otherwise."

Moore died at the age of 80 in January 2017. Levine told PEOPLE in May 2023 that he still watched The Mary Tyler Moore Show to remember his wife, saying, "I cry. I laugh. I'm just bowled over by how extraordinary she was."

02 of 09

Ed Asner as Lou Grant

Ed Asner played producer Lou Grant on the series, and the essence of his character came through on the show's very first episode when he told Mary Richards, "You got spunk … I hate spunk."

Asner won three Emmys for the show, plus another for the 1976 miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man and his role on the 1977 seminal miniseries Roots. In 1978, he led his own Mary Tyler Moore Show spinoff, Lou Grant, which saw the character lead a Los Angeles newspaper. He won two more Emmys for that show, which ran from 1977 to 1982, and Asner holds the record for most Emmy wins for a male actor.

The series provided a steadiness he otherwise struggled to find.

"For the first time, I don't have to run to the phone every 15 minutes to see if I still have a career," he told PEOPLE in 1978. "Professionally, I'm in the catbird seat."

Asner remained good friends with his castmates and continued to work after The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended, including as a voice actor. He received two Grammy nominations for audiobook performances and voiced characters on ‘90s cartoons like Spider-Man, Captain Planet and the Planeteers, Gargoyles and Batman: The Animated Series.

He also famously voiced the main role of Carl Fredricksen in Pixar's Up (2009) and played Santa Claus in Elf (2003). His later roles included Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, The Good Wife, Dead to Me and Cobra Kai, as well as the animated series Central Park. In 2001, Asner received the Actors Award (f.k.a. SAG Awards) Life Achievement Award.

Asner was married to Nancy Lou Sykes from 1959 to 1988. They shared children: Matthew, Liza and Kate. In 1987, he welcomed a son, Charles, with Carol Jean Vogelman. He married producer Cindy Gilmore in 1998. She filed for legal separation in 2007, and he filed for divorce in 2015.

Asner died of natural causes at his home in Tarzana, Calif., in August 2021. He was 91.

03 of 09

Gavin MacLeod as Murray Slaughter

Gavin MacLeod portrayed WJM-TV's news writer Murray Slaughter. He and Moore were the only characters to appear on every episode of the series.

He immediately transitioned from one hit series to another when he was cast as Captain Merrill Stubing on The Love Boat, which premiered in 1977 and ran until 1986.

MacLeod told PEOPLE in 1978 he didn't spend time feeling sad about his old job being over, saying, "When something's over, forget it. I don't miss it at all. We were close. But I don't miss my ex-wife either."

The actor had over 300 TV roles before he landed his major shows.

"Being an underdog and coming out a winner gives any human being satisfaction," he said of his career. "I'm doing exactly what I want. I give thanks all the time."

MacLeod's later on-screen appearances included Oz, Touched by an Angel and The Suite Life on Deck. In 2013, MacLeod released a memoir, This Is Your Captain Speaking: My Fantastic Voyage Through Hollywood, Faith & Life.

He and his first wife Joan F. Rootvik, whom he met when she was a Rockette, shared four children: Keith, David, Julie and Meghan. They divorced in 1972. He was then married to Patti Kendig from 1974 to 1982. The actor and Kendig both became evangelical Christians, which they said led them back to each other, and the two remarried in 1985.

MacLeod died in May 2021 at age 90.

04 of 09

Valerie Harper as Rhoda Morgenstern

Valerie Harper played Rhoda, Mary Richards' best friend.

She won three successive Emmys for the series before starring in her own spinoff, Rhoda, in 1974.

"I thought I'd feel a dark, quiet moment of self-hatred, that I'd be saying 'You can't do it, you're not a star' and you know it," she told PEOPLE at the time about getting her own series. "I'm not a star. I simply have a wonderful job."

Harper added of taking the leap to start a new show, "Maybe I'm a fool. I was so comfortable with Mary. We are the best of friends in real life, too, and she'll only be three stages away at CBS."

The actress wasn't a fool — Rhoda became a success, running for four years and earning her another Emmy.

She starred in the 1979 movie Chapter Two, which earned her a Golden Globe nod, and on two seasons of the sitcom Valerie. After she was fired from the show, it was eventually renamed The Hogan Family. 

Harper later appeared on episodes of Touched by an Angel, Melrose Place, Sex and the City, That '70s Show and Desperate Housewives, as well as in the iconic 1994 TV movie Death of a Cheerleader. She also competed on season 17 of Dancing with the Stars.

After beginning her career as a Broadway dancer and appearing in multiple shows from the 1950s to 1970s, she returned to the stage in the mid-1990s. In 2010, she received a Tony nomination for her role in Looped.

Harper was married to Richard Schaal from 1964 to 1978. In 1987, she married Tony Cacciotti, with whom she had one child, daughter Cristina.

In 2013, Harper went public with news that she had been diagnosed with leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a rare form of cancer. Doctors told her it was incurable and that she could die in as little as three months.

She would later also be diagnosed with lung and brain cancer.

" 'Incurable' is such a concise word," the New York native told PEOPLE at the time. "I was terrified."

Eventually, her thinking shifted, saying, "Cancer makes real what we try to obscure from ourselves. We spend our lifetimes thinking, 'I'm never going to die.' But cancer says, 'Hey, not so fast.' "

"I don't think of dying. I think of being here now," she added. "I think, 'I don't want to go.' But I give myself room to grieve. I give myself the space to be sad or angry, and then it passes, and I can get back to eating ice cream, which I've been doing by the pint."

Despite her prognosis, Harper underwent treatment, and four years later, she checked in with PEOPLE again.

"I've had a good run," she said. "I've tried to embrace every single day. What more can I ask for?"

Two years later, Harper died in August 2019 at the age of 80.

05 of 09

Ted Knight as Ted Baxter

Ted Knight portrayed the vain, untalented newscaster Ted Baxter and received six Emmy nominations for his role, winning once.

He told PEOPLE in 1977 that he rejected an offer to do a spinoff, saying, "I love the guy … but who could take Ted Baxter for 30 minutes each week?"

Knight did reprise his role, in a way, in a series of regional commercials and on the short-lived The Ted Knight Show.

"I was talked into that series by my avarice," he told PEOPLE in 1982. "I was tickled when it went off the air."

Knight also guest-starred on The Love Boat and appeared in the 1980 movie Caddyshack.

The actor then starred on the series Too Close for Comfort, which ran from 1980 to 1987 and was renamed The Ted Knight Show in its final season (the sitcom goes by its original title in syndication). Knight played a cartoonist whose adult daughters lived downstairs from him and his wife.

His character was famous for wearing sweatshirts from different colleges and universities, which were sent to him by fans.

"Ted was the buffoon, the butt of all the humor," he said in 1982. "Too Close for Comfort has opened up new vistas of comic possibilities for me."

He added, "People like us because we glamorize family life. They say it doesn't insult them — that they can be comfortable and entertained."

Knight married Dorothy Smith in 1948. They shared three kids: Ted Jr., Elyse and Eric.

The actor was diagnosed with colon cancer shortly after Mary Tyler Moore ended. The cancer returned in 1985, and Knight died in August 1986, per the Los Angeles Times. He was 62.

06 of 09

Cloris Leachman as Phyllis Lindstrom

Cloris Leachman played Phyllis Lindstrom, Mary's snobby friend and landlady. She, too, received her own spinoff, leading the cast of Phyllis for two years. Before The Mary Tyler Moore Show, she had already earned an Oscar for 1971's The Last Picture Show.

She had guest appearances on Cher, Promised Land and Malcolm in the Middle. Leachman also appeared in the movies Yesterday (1981), Castle in the Sky (1986), Spanglish (2004) and Mrs. Harris (2005). She was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2011.

Over her career, Leachman earned 22 Emmy nominations and won eight, including for The Mary Tyler Moore Show. She and Julia Louis-Dreyfus are tied for the most Emmy wins for a performer (the Veep star has 11 total wins).

In 2008, Leachman competed on season 7 of DWTS. The next year, she published her memoir, Cloris. Her last credited roles were a recurring guest spot on the 2019 Mad About You reboot, the first season of American Gods and the 2021 film Not to Forget.

From 1953 to 1978, Leachman was married to George Englund. They shared four children: Bryan, Dinah, Adam and Morgan. (Bryan died of an overdose in 1986.)

Leachman died of natural causes in January 2021 at age 94.

07 of 09

Georgia Engel as Georgette Franklin Baxter

Georgia Engel played Georgette Franklin Baxter, the girlfriend and later wife of Ted Baxter. A good friend of Mary, she and Ted even tied the knot in her apartment.

Engel, who started her career in theater, later played Pat MacDougall on Everybody Loves Raymond from 2003 to 2005. She received two Emmy nominations for The Mary Tyler Moore Show and three more for her role on Everybody Loves Raymond.

The actress also had recurring roles on Coach and Hot in Cleveland and guest spots on shows like The Office, Two and a Half Men and One Day at a Time.

She starred in Papa Was a Preacher (1985), Signs of Life (1989), The Sweetest Thing (2002) and Open Season (2006), and appeared on Broadway multiple times, including in 2006’s The Drowsy Chaperone.

Engel died in April 2019. She was 70.

08 of 09

Betty White as Sue Ann Nivens

Already a TV star, White joined The Mary Tyler Moore Show on season 4 as Sue Ann Nivens, after Harper left.

Moore told the Television Academy Foundation in 1997, "They wrote a character who was described as being 'as sweet as Betty White but as vicious as a barracuda.' I said to the writers after hearing mumblings about it, 'Well, we're auditioning, but we haven't found this character. Why don't you actually interview Betty White?' "

At the time, White was known as an absolute sweetheart, but Sue Ann was a home-wrecker who had an affair with Phyllis' husband. She earned three Emmy nominations and won two for the role.

White told PEOPLE in 1976 that she supported Moore's decision to end the show, saying, "Mary knows when to quit."

White met her husband, Allen Ludden, when she appeared on an episode of Password, which he hosted. They wed in June 1963, and she became stepmother to his children, David, Martha and Sarah. Ludden died of stomach cancer in June 1981.

In 1983, White began appearing on Mama's Family in a recurring role, based on a part she had played on The Carol Burnett Show in 1975. She also hosted her own game show, Just Men!, and became the first woman to win the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Game Show Host.

White's biggest triumph came in 1985 when she was cast as Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls. The hit series became a classic in both its first run and the decades of syndication that followed. White received seven Emmy nominations for the show, winning once. She also starred on the spinoff The Golden Palace.

The actress went on to star on Maybe This Time and Hot in Cleveland. She won two more Emmys for appearing on The John Larroquette Show and hosting Saturday Night Live, and earned a Grammy for the audiobook of her 2011 memoir If You Ask Me (And of Course You Won't).

White continued to make regular TV appearances through 2019 and starred in the 2009 movie The Proposal alongside Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. She also worked as a voice actress in 2012's The Lorax and 2019's Toy Story 4.

In 1999, as the late actress celebrated her 50th year in television, she told PEOPLE, "I've been the luckiest broad on the face of this earth."

"You better realize how good life is while it's happening," she added, "because before you know it, it will all be gone."

White died on Dec. 31, 2022, just days before her 100th birthday.

09 of 09

John Amos as Gordon Howard

John Amos appeared as weatherman Gordon "Gordy" Howard on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

He went on to star as James Evans Sr. in Good Times. The actor revealed to PEOPLE in 1977 that he didn't get along with the show's creator, Norman Lear, calling them "two billy goats butting heads," adding, "But he owned the pasture."

Amos received acclaim for playing older Kunta Kinte on Roots, for which he received an Emmy nomination. The miniseries, he said in 1977, "helped shrink my head and put the whole business in perspective. My ego was getting in the way — I had a bad case of the biggies."

"I wanted to make an important motion picture, like tomorrow morning," he continued. "But Roots taught me it took us 200 years to get where we are now."

Amos also starred on Hunter and The West Wing and made dozens of guest appearances on TV, including 30 Rock, Ballers, Two and a Half Men, Touched by an Angel and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

The New Jersey native was married twice. He wed artist Noel "Noni" Mickelson in 1965, and they welcomed two children: daughter Shannon and son Kelly Christopher "K.C." After he and Mickelson divorced in 1975, He briefly wed actress Lillian Lehman, though details about their relationship are private.

Amos — the last surviving member of the Mary Tyler Moore Show cast — died at 84 of congestive heart failure in August 2024, but his death wasn't publicly announced until October.

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