Inside Their Groundbreaking Friendship
LIKE MARY AND RHODA, THE CO-STARS KEPT A CLOSE BOND THROUGH GOOD TIMES AND BAD
In The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s pilot, Mary Richards opens the drapes to her new apartment in Minneapolis — only to find Rhoda Morgenstern on the terrace, washing the windows to what she mistakenly believes is her new pad. Viewers could clearly see the chemistry between the sitcom’s star and Valerie Harper, as Rhoda became Mary’s upstairs neighbor and closest confidante. “They were genuinely friends,” Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, author of Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, tells Closer. “They got along wonderfully, and that’s why they worked together so well.”
The real-life friendship lasted more than 45 years, as Valerie got her own spin-off, Rhoda (produced by Mary’s company, MTM Enterprises), and both women faced health struggles — Mary with diabetes, which led to her death on Jan. 25 at 80, and Valerie with cancer, which she still battles at 77. “Their friendship was instant,” an insider tells Closer. “I don’t think they ever had a fight.” As with their odd-couple characters, Mary and Valerie were an unlikely match. “Mary was more reserved, and Valerie is kind of loud,” Armstrong says.
Their on-screen bond proved groundbreaking. “It was a deep, complicated and significant friendship between two single women,” psychologist Bella DePaulo, author of Singled Out, tells Closer. “We had never seen anything like that on TV before.” Agrees TV Guide senior critic Matt Roush, “They could be independent and funny and not be held to any sort of domestic stereotype that had reined in women before that.” And they paved the way for gal pals on later comedies like The Golden Girls and Sex and the City.
When Mary passed away, Valerie was understandably overcome. “I cannot stop the emotions I’m experiencing,” she said. “Mary was my colleague, my sister soul mate, and, above all, one hell of a girlfriend!” — Bruce Fretts, with reporting by Katie Bruno, Ilyssa Panitz,
Melissa Roberto and Jaclyn Roth
“Mary has just been a wonderful friend.” — Valerie, about Mary, to Closer in 2014