:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/betty_white_and_allen_ludden-3239963-2000-9d2042d79b5e4ad4a1a99037318799a5.jpg)
Betty White was best known for her role on The Golden Girls where she famously played Rose Nylund, who lived in Minnesota with her husband Charlie and their five children, before retiring to Florida and moving in with Blanche, Dorothy, and Sophia.
While Rose had a few boyfriends over the eight seasons of The Golden Girls, she never re-married and always spoke very fondly of Charlie. Turns out Rose's relationship status was very similar to White's own personal life.
Over the course of her 99 years, White had a few marriages. In 1945, she married U.S. Army pilot Dick Barker, and then got hitched to Hollywood agent Lane Allen from 1947 until 1949. She met her third husband Allen Ludden when she appeared as a guest on his game show, Password, in 1961. They were smitten, but White was a bit hesitant to get re-married. Ludden had to propose two times before White finally accepted his hand in marriage, according to Pop Sugar. They finally tied the knot in 1963. She and Ludden were married for 18 years, until Ludden passed away from stomach cancer in 1981 when White was 59 years old.
White had no regret about ending her first two marriages, even though she admitted the divorces were probably her fault. "I had 18 wonderful years with Allen Ludden," she told Piers Morgan in 2012. "The first two were . . . rehearsals."
The one regret she did have, though, was rejecting Ludden's marriage proposals. "I spent a whole year, wasted a whole year that Allen and I could have had together, saying, 'No, I wouldn't marry him. No, I won't. No, I won't leave California. No, I won't move to New York,'" she told Oprah Winfrey back in 2015. "I wasted a whole year we could have had together."
White never re-married and when she was asked if she would ever consider tying the knot again, she demurred. During an interview with Anderson Cooper in 2011, she sassily replied: "If you've had the best, who needs the rest?"
Rose Nylund would undoubtedly agree.