“I adored her from the moment we were introduced,” writes Dick Van Dyke about meeting Mary Tyler Moore in his memoir, My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business. “But I still had a couple of problems. For one, I thought she was too young to play my wife.”
“You two are perfectly suited,” Carl Reiner told Van Dyke, according to his book, Why and When the Dick Van Dyke Show Was Born. “You look a lot younger than you are, and she looks much older than she is. I know that the audience will accept you as a couple.”
Reiner was correct on a couple of counts. First, the audience had no problem buying Rob and Laura as a couple. Second, Moore must have looked older than she was because, according to PBS Pioneers of Television, the actress inflated her age to make sure she landed the part of Laura Petrie.
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Before Moore ever met Reiner and Van Dyke, she learned that the show’s casting team was looking for someone close to Van Dyke’s age to star as his wife. She knew that Van Dyke was 11 years older than she was, so she fudged her age by a couple of years older to seem like a more credible match, according to MeTV.
Moore was eventually found out, but by that time, the couple’s chemistry was apparent and she’d already been hired. With no real harm done, The Dick Van Dyke Show not only moved on but repurposed the situation for a future episode.
Reiner was famous for using his own real-life experiences, as well as those of his cast and crew, to generate plot lines. Moore’s white lie about her age was too good to pass up, and generated the story behind a two-part episode. In “Laura’s Little Lie,” Rob notices that his wife disappears every time their insurance agent drops by. She’s afraid of getting a physical that would record vital information on the insurance forms.
Eventually, Laura confesses her lie — when they got hitched, she fudged her age by two years on the marriage license. Rob comforts his sobbing wife. He doesn’t mind that he married “a 21-year-old hag” instead of a blushing 19-year-old. But his disposition changes when Laura reveals that her lie went the other direction — the nearly-30-year-old Army sergeant married a 17-year-old. Yikes!
Marrying a 19-year-old might sound creepy, although the average age for a bride at the time was 20 years old. But younger than 19 was another matter. “I married a 17-year-old girl?” he exclaims.
It gets worse. Laura lied not only because she was afraid Rob would think she was too young, but because it wouldn’t have been allowed on the marriage license. That brings both to a shocking realization — they might not be legally married, with a son born out of wedlock. Double yikes!
The problem is quickly resolved with a call to the Petrie’s lawyer, Marvin. Turns out, they’re not technically married and Ritchie is a bastard after all (at least in the eyes of the state). The problem is solved when they decide to get married again that night and then catch a movie.
It’s one of the weirdest Dick Van Dyke Show episodes ever — a “misunderstanding” that has real consequences (not that the show ever dealt with them). And the story never happens if Mary Tyler Moore hadn’t lied about being 26.
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