Mary Tyler Moore

Mary Tyler Moore married thrice. Her first marriage was to Richard Carleton Meeker, at the age of 18, in 1955. She gave birth to a son, named Richard Jr. in 1956. Mary and Richard Carleton divorced in 1961.

She had to endure the tragedy of the death of her son, Richard who died at the age of 24, when accidentally shot himself while handling a sawed-off shotgun.

Her second marriage was to Grant Tinker, then a CBS executive, in 1962. The marriage lasted for 19 years and the divorced in 1981.

Mary Tyler Moore was born on December 29, 1936 in Brooklyn, New York, to George Tyler Moore, a clerk, and Marjorie. She was the eldest of three siblings and their home was in Flushing, Queens.

She attended Saint Rose of Lima, a Catholic school in Brooklyn. When she was eight, her family moved to Los Angeles where she attended St. Ambrose School and the Immaculate Heart High School.

At seventeen, Moore wanted to be a dancer. She starred as Happy Hotpoint, a tiny elf dancing on Hotpoint appliances in TV commercials during the 1950s series Ozzie and Harriet, her first job.

In her first regular television role, she played a mysterious and glamorous telephone receptionist in the detective drama, ‘Richard Diamond, Private Detective’ that aired from 1957 to 1960.

In 1960, she guest-starred in two episodes of the William Bendix-Doug McClure NBC western series, ‘Overland Trail’ and also appeared in the first episode of NBC's sitcom, ‘The Tab Hunter Show’.

The year 1961 was a fruitful one for her as she got big parts in movies and television, including ‘Bourbon Street Beat’, ‘77 Sunset Strip’, ‘Surfside Six’, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’, ‘Steve Canyon’, ‘Hawaiian Eye’, ‘Thriller’ and ‘Lock-Up’.

She made her movie debut in the dramatic aviation film ‘X-15’, a fictionalized account of the X-15 research rocket plane program which also starred David McLean and Charles Bronson.

Between 1961 and 1966, in The Dick Van Dyke Show, Moore’s energetic comic performances as Van Dyke's character's wife, made her signature tight Capri pants and herself internationally famous.

‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’, which aired from 1970 to 1977, is "one of the most acclaimed television programs ever produced." Moore presented a character different from other single TV women of the time.

In Robert Redford’s 1980 directorial debut ‘Ordinary People’, a critical and commercial successful film, she starred with Donald Sutherland, about a family’s disintegration, following the death of a son in a boating accident