Actors Ted Danson and Mary Steenbergen have been together for over 30 years and somehow they seem to fall in love more every day. For example, consider two posing on the red carpet at the 2025 SAG Awards. The iconic Hollywood couple were able to support each other throughout their careers after tying their acting together in the first place. They initially met as coworkers while they were already alive. Ten years later, in just the right moment, they reunited and an epic romance began.
On March 28, 2025, Netflix announced that Steenburgen will be taking part in season 2 of Danson’s show A Man on the Inside, so the pair will work together again. On the show, Danson plays a widowed retiree named Charles. Charles infiltrates for a private investigator at a senior facility and realizes that his life is changing. His wife plays “a former musician who is heavily opposed to the case Charles is trying to settle.”
So far, everything you need to know about Mary Steenbergen’s relationship with her Ted Danson.
Who is Mary Steenbergen?
Mary Steenbergen was originally from Newport, Arkansas. There, she was raised by her parents Nell and Maurice Steenbergen. He worked as a secretary and freight train conductor on the board of education, respectively. She began acting in high school, but moved to New York City to pursue it as a 1972 career. Her breakout roles in Melvin and Howard in 198O when Linda Dunmer won an Oscar for the best actress in a supporting role.
In an interview with Recall and Yahoo Entertainment in 2023, Steenburgen discussed how it broke with the help of actor Jack Nicholson.
“It was pretty extraordinary. I was in New York for about six and a half years. I was a waitress,” she explained, and while I was taking classes with famous acting teacher Sandy Meisner, she said, “I really didn’t get anywhere.”
That is until she is called to a general meeting with the casting agent.
“On the way out, I said, ‘Are you casting something in particular?” And she said, ‘I want you to get a meeting, but at this point I’m supposed to (see) a famous actress or a really beautiful model,” recalled Steenburgen. “I said, ‘Well, I’ll give you the opportunity to go out (in the lobby) and wait until I think about it and see the script.’ Now I’ve never done anything like that in my career.
Steenburgen went to the lobby and saw “three gorgeous models” holding the script.
She continued, “And I start going, “Oh my God, I blew it away with the most important person I know in New York…. I’ll go there, and I’m going to apologize for being so forceful. And it’s Jack Nicholson. And he says, “Why?” And I said, “Because I don’t have a script.” He goes, gets it, and hand it over to me. ”
She went home to work on the script and met Nicholson the next day and read it. She was then invited to a screening test for the film and was cast as the lead by Nicholson. Steenburgen has an absolutely prolific career in film and television, and is a famous face for almost every generation, and will he appear in all of the dramas like eating Gilbert Grape? To beloved comedies like 30 Rock and Elf.
According to her bio at the Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame, Steen Bergen is also a songwriter for the Universal Music Publishing Group, working on the music for the animated film The Under and writing songs for the film’s Wild Rose. On her IMDB page, she also receives credits for the Valley Inn song.
Steenburgen and Danson have a long list of credits for projects they worked on together, including Pontiac Moon, the 1996 miniseries Gulliver’s Trip, CBS sitcom Inc., the 2004 TV film It Must Love, Steenburgen, and Pontiac Moon, appearing on Danson’s shows, including Mayor, Good Place, and Becker.
They also climbed the curb with your enthusiasm on the curb of Larry David, except that the couple’s version divorced in the series. They ended up having to tell their friends that it was a fictional plot and that they were still happily married.
How did they meet?
They first met in 1983 while married to others. Danson married Casey Coates, and Steenbergen married Malcolm McDowell. Danson was auditioning to play a role in the film Cross Creek, where he didn’t land. He told people in 2021, “It was a hot mess at the time.”
“I was married. He was married. It wasn’t our moment,” added Steenburgen.
Then in 1994 they were both cast in the film Pontiac Moon, each of which recently split from their long-term partners.
“We both vowed to have a relationship,” joked Steenbergen. She also said in 2018, “We met when we were 40 and 45. We were alive a little bit… We met when both of us were staring at some demons within ourselves.
In 1994, they attended a close-up ceremony at the American Film Institute.
In an interview with the 2021 Jess Cagle Podcast, Steenburgen said meeting Danson had rethinked her original impression.
“Everything surprised me because I was sure I knew who he was,” she shared. “It’s annoying, but I thought he was kind of smooth and refreshing. He was very soulful and of course devastatingly interesting.
While talking about the role recall, Steen Bergen reflected Pontiac Moon and the way she gradually warmed up to her future husband.
“I just broke up with someone and it was a really difficult relationship and I just said, ‘I’m done.’ I joked, “I’m not good at relationships, it’s my fault, and my friends love to remind me of this moment.”
“I didn’t fall in love right away. He had gone through a lot in his life and I said, ‘Wow, that guy is complicated,’ she continued. And little by little, we all go out for dinner and he may not be there. And I was like, “Yeah, it’s not that much fun when he’s not here.” Do you know? And little by little, I became friends with him and realized something big was happening to me. And I have to say, it was one of the gifts from my angels that I came to meet him and spend my life with him. ”
In 2022, at the Drew Barrymore Show, Danson recalled the same period. He eventually invited Steen Bargain on a canoe trip with a friend and said, “By the time we returned, I think we were both in love.”
Do they have children?
Danson and Steenburgen have a family mix. Each of them has two children from a previous relationship. Danson and Coates share two daughters, Kate and Alexis. Steenburgen has son Charlie and daughter Lilly with McDowell. Steenburgen told people in 2021.
What else did they say about each other?
“It doesn’t sound horny, but I’ll sign up for another 100 lifetimes because he makes me a better person,” Steenburgen told people in an interview.
In 2020, they celebrated their 25th anniversary, and the actress paid tribute to their selfies.
Did Danson and Steenburgen join the 2025 Emmys?
On September 14th, Danson and Steen Bergen received the Bob Hope Humanity Award at the Emmy Awards in Los Angeles. When they accepted it together, Danson said, “There is no honor that means more to Mary and me than this, and the fact that it is given to both of us means the world.”
Steenburgen states, “If it’s true that life is made up of two emotions, love and fear, then if it’s true that the balance of the world is slightly disrupted. We don’t want to live in fear.
