Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke: A 36-Year Marriage
Some love stories begin with a grand gesture, and some begin with a radio show. The story of Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke began with both at once. In February 1948, two young people from Danville, Illinois, exchanged their wedding vows in front of a minister and two radio microphones while an estimated 15 million people listened in. He was a 22-year-old entertainer who could not afford a wedding. She was the girl he had known since their teenage years. Neither of them could have guessed that the marriage would last 36 years, survive the rise of one of the biggest stars in American television, and end only after a long, painful separation.
Among the many celebrity stories that start with fame, this one is different, because fame came second. When Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke married, Dick Van Dyke was not yet a household name. He was a young man from a small Illinois town doing a two-man comedy act, hoping for a break. Margie was the person who believed in him before anyone else did. She stood beside him through the lean years, raised their four children while his career took off, and watched him become one of the most loved entertainers in America. And when the marriage finally ended, she walked away from the spotlight and never came back.
This article looks at what is actually known about Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke, from Danville to the radio wedding, the four children, the fame years, the troubles that ended the marriage, and the quiet decades after. Where sources disagree, the disagreement is noted.
Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke Quick Facts
- Full names: Margie Willett (also known as Marjorie Willett) and Richard Wayne Van Dyke
- Margie born: 1927, Danville, Illinois, United States
- Dick born: 13 December 1925, West Plains, Missouri, United States
- Marriage: Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke were married on 12 February 1948, on the ABC radio show Bride and Groom, and divorced in 1984
- Marriage length: 36 years
- Divorced: 1984 (after separating in 1976)
- Children: Four — Christian, Barry, Stacy and Carrie Beth Van Dyke
- Margie died: 30 October 2008, aged 81, of pancreatic cancer
- Dick later married: Arlene Silver in 2012
- Dick’s milestone: Turned 100 on 13 December 2025
- Public profile: Margie kept a very private life, away from Hollywood
Who Was Margie Willett?
Margie Willett was born in 1927 in Danville, Illinois, a small city in the east of the state, not far from the Indiana border. She grew up there in the 1930s and 1940s, in a town built on coal mining and manufacturing, a long way from the film studios of California. Almost nothing reliable has been published about her parents, her schooling or her childhood home, and the biography sites that claim to know those details offer nothing that can be checked. What can be said with confidence is that she grew up in Danville, and that the town shaped both her life and her marriage, because it was there that the story of Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke began, when she met the boy who would become Dick Van Dyke.
Dick Van Dyke had grown up in Danville too. Some accounts say they began dating in 1945, when Dick was 20 and Margie was 18. Others put their first meeting in 1947. The exact year is one of the small conflicts in the record, and it is worth noting rather than smoothing over. What is not in doubt is that they were sweethearts from the same small town, and that by 1947 they were talking seriously about marriage.
Margie Willett was not an actress, a singer or a performer. She never sought a career in entertainment, and she never tried to build a public profile of her own. She was a private person who married a man who became very public, and she spent most of her adult life managing the gap between those two things: raising four children and keeping the family home running while her husband toured and filmed. The marriage of Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke lasted 36 years.
The Radio Wedding of 1948
Danville in the 1940s was the kind of town where everybody knew everybody, and Dick Van Dyke, born in West Plains, Missouri, in 1925, had grown up there. In the summer of 1947 he left for Los Angeles with another local, Phil Erickson, to put on a two-man comedy act. He was earning very little, and a wedding seemed out of reach. But he wanted to marry Margie, and he told a radio producer about it. The producer had an answer: the ABC show Bride and Groom paid for couples’ weddings and honeymoons in exchange for broadcasting the ceremony live. Dick borrowed money to send Margie a one-way train ticket, and the wedding was arranged.
On 12 February 1948, Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke were married on Bride and Groom, with a minister, two radio microphones and an audience estimated at 15 million listeners. Dick later described the day in his memoir, Dick Van Dyke: My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business, and he told the story again in a 2016 interview with The Guardian: “Borrowing money, I sent Margie a one-way train ticket, and on Feb. 12, 1948, we exchanged ‘I do’s’ in front of a minister and two radio microphones as an estimated 15 million people listened in.”
It is easy to laugh at the idea now, but for Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke it was practical. The show paid for the ceremony and the honeymoon, and a young entertainer with almost no income could suddenly afford to get married. Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke did not begin with money, connections or a safety net. They began with each other, a train ticket and a radio audience.
The marriage of Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke would last 36 years, which is a long time by any standard, and a very long time in Hollywood. The couple would live through Dick’s rise from a struggling comic to a Broadway star, a film star and a television legend, and through the birth of four children. They would also live through the troubles that eventually ended the marriage.
The Early Years: Struggle Before Fame
The first years were hard. Dick was still finding his way in show business, money was tight, and the family moved where the work was. Their eldest son, Christian, was born on 13 May 1950, and their second son, Barry, on 31 July 1951, both in Atlanta, Georgia, according to several accounts.
Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke lived the classic young-actor life: Margie kept the household together while Dick chased auditions, stage work and television spots. It is the kind of role that rarely makes it into biographies, and it is the kind that matters most. A young actor’s wife in the early 1950s did the cooking, the childcare and the budgeting, and she did it while her husband was away for weeks at a time.
There were losses in those years too. According to some second-hand biography sources, Margie suffered a miscarriage and lost twins during the marriage, though that detail comes from biography sites rather than from the family itself and should be treated as reported rather than confirmed. For Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke, the mid-1950s brought change: Dick’s career was beginning to take shape, and the family was growing. Their first daughter, Stacy, was born in New Orleans in 1954 or 1955, again while the family was travelling for work. The youngest child, Carrie Beth, was born in Los Angeles in 1961. The four children of Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke, born in four different cities, tell the story of a family that followed the work wherever it led.
Four Children and a Growing Family
Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke had four children: Christian, Barry, Stacy and Carrie Beth. Each of them took a different path, and each of them says something about the family they grew up in.
Christian Van Dyke, the eldest child of Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke, was born on 13 May 1950. He appeared on camera as a child on The Dick Van Dyke Show when he was 11 years old, then stepped away from acting and went on to study law, earning a law degree from Arizona State University. He married Caroline Heller, and they had two children.
Barry Van Dyke, the second son of Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke, was born on 31 July 1951, and he was the one who followed his father most closely. He became an actor, best known as Detective Steve Sloan on Diagnosis: Murder, the CBS crime drama in which he starred alongside his father. He married Mary Carey in 1974, and they had four children of their own: Carey, Shane, Wes and Taryn. Barry is the reason the Van Dyke name carried into a third generation of performers.
Stacy Van Dyke, born in 1954 or 1955, tried acting as well, appearing in The New Dick Van Dyke Show and in Diagnosis: Murder when she was young. She married Mike Breen, and they had two children. She died in 2017, according to reports, though the details of her death were not widely covered. Carrie Beth Van Dyke, the youngest, born in Los Angeles in 1961, led the most private life of the four. She married Kevin McNally in 1983, and they had two children.
The family that Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke built was large and close, and it stayed close even after the marriage ended. The children grew up on television sets and in rehearsal rooms, but the home Margie made for them was the constant. She was the one who was there when the cameras were off.
The Fame Years: Mary Poppins and The Dick Van Dyke Show
The 1960s changed everything for Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke. In 1961, The Dick Van Dyke Show began on CBS, with Dick playing television writer Rob Petrie opposite Mary Tyler Moore. The show ran for five seasons and won 15 Emmy Awards, and it made Dick Van Dyke one of the most famous men in America. In 1964, he starred as Bert the chimney sweep in Mary Poppins, one of the most successful films of the decade, and in 1968 he played Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
For Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke, those years meant a different kind of life at home. The family was now wealthy and famous, and the house in Los Angeles became a place where the entertainment industry came to call. But Margie Willett preferred a life away from the spotlight, and she spent much of her time at the family’s ranch in Arizona, away from Hollywood. She was, by every account, a private person, and fame did not change that.
It is worth saying plainly that Margie Willett never became a celebrity in her own right. She was the wife of a celebrity, and the mother of his children, and she was content with that. The press rarely wrote about her, and when they did, it was usually in the context of her husband’s career. She gave no interviews, wrote no memoir and made no attempt to trade on the name. That quietness is the reason so little is known about her today.
The fame years were also the years when the marriage of Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke began to strain. Dick Van Dyke has spoken openly, in his memoir and in interviews, about his struggles with alcohol, and Margie shared those struggles. The pressure of fame, long absences and a household built around one person’s career made things harder, and the strain would only grow in the decade that followed.
The Affair, the Separation and the Divorce
The marriage of Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke began to break down in the 1970s. In 1974, Dick confessed to Margie that he had begun a relationship with Michelle Triola, his agent’s secretary. The confession came after years of strain, and it marked a turning point. The couple separated in 1976, and for the next eight years they lived apart.
Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke did not divorce straight away. For a long time, they agreed to live their separate lives without making the split permanent. Dick later said they were unable to conceive of a divorce, and the two of them stayed legally married while living apart. Margie stayed in Arizona and later in Texas, and Dick built a new life with Michelle Triola in California.
The divorce was finally made official in 1984, with 4 May 1984 the most specific date given. The end of the marriage, after 36 years, was quiet: no public fight, no tell-all interview and no bitter court battle. Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke ended their marriage the way Margie had lived most of her life: privately.
Michelle Triola and Dick Van Dyke lived together for more than 30 years after that, though they never married. Triola died in 2009. Dick later married Arlene Silver, a makeup artist he had met backstage at an awards show in 2006, in 2012. He was 86 years old. Margie, meanwhile, never remarried after the marriage of Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke ended.
Margie’s Later Life in Texas
After the divorce ended the marriage of Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke, Margie lived a quiet life away from Hollywood. She settled in Texas, and according to reports she worked at her family’s furniture business in Rosenberg, Texas, until her retirement. Rosenberg is a small city near Houston, a long way from the studios and the press, and it suited her. She lived there for the rest of her life, close to family, and out of the public eye.
She stayed in touch with her children and grandchildren, and she remained on good terms with Dick, as far as the record shows. Dick has spoken about her with affection in later years, and when she died, he admitted he had lost a part of himself.
In 2007, Margie was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She died on 30 October 2008, at the age of 81. She was survived by her four children and several grandchildren. Her death was reported in the press, but only briefly. The obituaries told the same short story: born in Danville in 1927, married Dick Van Dyke in 1948, mother of four, divorced in 1984, died at 81. It was a short account of a long life, and it was the account Margie herself would probably have wanted. She had never asked for attention, and she did not get much of it, even at the end.
The Legacy of Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke
Dick Van Dyke went on to a second act that few entertainers ever get. He kept working into his nineties, performing with Vandy Camp, a troupe built around his wife Arlene Silver, near their home in Malibu. In December 2024, at 99, he starred in the music video for Coldplay’s “All My Love”. On 13 December 2025, he turned 100. He has become a symbol of longevity, optimism and good humour.
But the marriage of Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke is the foundation of that story, and it is too easy to forget. Dick Van Dyke became who he became during the 36 years he was married to Margie. She was there when he had nothing, when he was doing a two-man act on the road, when the radio wedding paid for their honeymoon. She raised the four children who carried the family name forward, and she kept the home together while his career took him away for months at a time. The fame that came later rested on the years when she held everything together.
The legacy of Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke is not a film or a television show. It is a family. Four children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and a name that has now been on American screens for three generations. Barry Van Dyke’s children worked alongside their father and grandfather on Diagnosis: Murder, and the family gathered again for Dick’s 100th birthday and the Coldplay video. That continuity, from a radio wedding in 1948 to a music video in 2024, is the real story of the marriage.
Margie Willett herself left no memoir and no public record of her own thoughts. That is a loss for anyone trying to understand her, and it is also a kind of statement. She chose privacy over publicity, and she kept that choice for 81 years.
Common Confusions About Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke
Because Margie Willett kept such a low profile, and because so much of what is written about Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke comes from low-quality biography sites that copy each other, several errors and mix-ups keep appearing online. The most common ones are worth clearing up.
When did they meet? Some sources say Dick and Margie began dating in 1945, when he was 20 and she was 18. Others say they met in 1947. The 1945 date appears in several accounts, while the 1947 date is tied to the year Dick left Danville for Los Angeles. This article gives both dates and notes the conflict rather than choosing one without proof.
Is her name Margie or Marjorie? Both spellings appear in the record. She is most often called Margie Willett, but she is also listed as Marjorie Willett, and at least one source spells it “Margerie”. Dick’s memoir and most major outlets use “Margie”. This article uses Margie Willett, with Marjorie noted as the fuller form.
When was Carrie Beth born? Most reliable sources give 18 October 1961, in Los Angeles. But at least one widely copied biography site gives 27 August 1972, which would make her far younger than her siblings and does not fit the timeline of the family. The 1961 date is the one this article uses.
When was the divorce final? Some sources say the couple made their split permanent in 1981, while most give 1984, with 4 May 1984 the most specific date. The difference probably comes from confusing the end of the separation period with the legal divorce. The 1984 date is the one carried by the majority of sources.
What was her net worth? Figures are quoted online, and none of them comes from a credible financial source. There is no public record of Margie’s wealth, and no figure should be quoted as fact. Some sites guess at a divorce settlement from 1984, but the details were kept private, and guessing is not evidence.
Did Margie remarry? There are no public reports of Margie Willett remarrying after her divorce from Dick Van Dyke in 1984. That is the honest position: no evidence of a remarriage, not proof that one never happened.
Frequently Asked Questions About Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke
Who was Margie Willett?
Margie Willett was the first wife of actor Dick Van Dyke. Born in Danville, Illinois, in 1927, she married Dick on 12 February 1948 on the radio show Bride and Groom. They were married for 36 years and had four children together before divorcing in 1984. She lived a private life and died in 2008, aged 81.
How did Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke get married?
They married on 12 February 1948 on the ABC radio show Bride and Groom. The show paid for the wedding and honeymoon, because the young couple could not afford a ceremony. Dick borrowed money to send Margie a one-way train ticket to Los Angeles, and they exchanged vows in front of a minister and two radio microphones while an estimated 15 million people listened.
How many children did Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke have?
They had four children: Christian, born in 1950; Barry, born in 1951; Stacy, born in 1954 or 1955; and Carrie Beth, born in 1961. Barry followed his father into acting, while Christian became a lawyer and Carrie Beth led a private life.
Why did Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke divorce?
Dick confessed to an affair with Michelle Triola, his agent’s secretary, in 1974. The couple separated in 1976 and lived apart for eight years before the divorce was finalised in 1984. Both of them had also struggled with alcohol, which added to the strain on the marriage.
When did Margie Willett die?
Margie Willett died on 30 October 2008, at the age of 81, of pancreatic cancer. She had been diagnosed the year before. She spent her later years in Texas, where she worked at her family’s furniture business until her retirement.
Who is Dick Van Dyke married to now?
Dick Van Dyke has been married to Arlene Silver, a makeup artist and singer, since 2012. They met backstage at an awards show in 2006. He turned 100 on 13 December 2025.
Did Margie Willett ever remarry after the divorce?
There are no public reports of Margie Willett remarrying after her divorce from Dick Van Dyke in 1984. She lived a private life in Texas for the rest of her life.
Conclusion
Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke were married for 36 years, and the marriage began with almost nothing: a young comedian, a girl from Danville, a borrowed train ticket and a radio show. It survived the lean years, the birth of four children and the rise of one of the biggest stars in American television. It ended after an affair, a long separation and a quiet divorce in 1984. The marriage of Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke was over, and Margie never remarried, never wrote a memoir and never sought the spotlight. She worked at her family’s furniture business in Texas, raised her family, and died in 2008 at the age of 81, of pancreatic cancer.
The story of Margie Willett and Dick Van Dyke matters because Margie’s is the other half of a famous life. Dick Van Dyke’s career is well documented, but the woman who stood beside him for its first 36 years is mostly remembered in a few lines. She was a private person who married a public man, held a family together through fame and trouble, and chose a quiet life when the marriage ended. That choice, quietly made and quietly kept, is what makes her worth knowing. For readers who want to check the basic facts about classic Hollywood and the television stars of its golden age, a general reference is a good place to start.
