Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss, 87, Have Been Married for 64 Years: How the ’60s Stars Found Lasting Love
They've been together since college and have always made a great team, onscreen and off
A marriage that lasts nearly 65 years is rare under any circumstance, and this is particularly true in Hollywood, where divorces and romantic indiscretions are as commonplace as Botox. When actors stay together for decades, it’s something worth celebrating, and the 64-year marriage between Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss has to be one of the longest in the industry.
Benjamin and Prentiss rose to fame in the ’60s and ’70s and costarred in a sitcom, He & She, but their marriage predated their stardom—and it’s still going strong today. Read on to see how the two delightfully quirky actors forged their unbreakable bond.
Paula Prentiss and Richard Benjamin’s college meet-cute
Paula Prentiss (who was then going by her given last name, Ragusa) and Richard Benjamin met when they were classmates in the drama program at Northwestern University. The two actors-in-training came from very different backgrounds, as Benjamin was a Jewish boy from New York while Prentiss was a Catholic girl from Texas, but they quickly fell for one another, thanks in part to the fact that Benjamin was taller than her! (The actress stood 5-foot-10, and her lanky frame was often part of her physical comedy.)
In the couple’s senior year, Prentiss won the college’s best actress award, while he won best actor, and they married in 1961, shortly after graduating. While their marriage proved remarkably solid, it was planned according to the demands of MGM, as Prentiss was under contract with the studio, and in that era, actresses weren’t allowed to bring along romantic partners unless while on the promotional circuit unless they were married to them.
The couple started acting professionally around the same time, as Benjamin began appearing in TV shows in the early ’60s, while Prentiss made her debut with the 1960 movie Where the Boys Are. Prentiss became famous before Benjamin did, as she had already starred in comedies like Follow the Boys (1963), Man’s Favorite Sport? (1964), The World of Henry Orient (1964) and What’s New Pussycat? (1965) before Benjamin starred in his first movie, Goodbye, Columbus, in 1969.
In a 1962 interview with the Elmira Star-Gazette, Benjamin took the fact that his wife found success first in stride, saying, “There’s no conflict between us. When we were in school we thought about what would happen if one of us became a success before the other. It turns out that her success has strengthened our relationship. I help her, and that helps me in preparing to be a director.” It’s an admirably progressive view for the time, and Benjamin did, in fact, become a director in addition to an actor and helmed popular films like My Favorite Year (1982) and Mermaids (1990). Clearly, their ongoing mutual support paid off!
Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss’ onscreen collaborations
In 1967, Benjamin and Prentiss costarred as husband and wife in the sitcom He & She. While the show was a critical success and won an Emmy Award, it was canceled after its first season. Over time, the show’s sophistication and wit was cited as an influence on iconic ’70s programs like The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Speaking to the Ventura County Star when He & She premiered, Benjamin noted, “We’re really playing ourselves” (their characters were even named Dick and Paula, and had similar backgrounds to the actors). Working together doesn’t always go smoothly for actors, but Benjamin and Prentiss had an easy time of it, and he said, “‘We never upstage each other. It’s no fun that way. The only way to enjoy a joke, privately or when other people are watching, is to set it up well. In our case, Paula says her lines and I say mine. A good actor—like a good husband, in my opinion—is too busy minding his own funny business when a joke is involved to steal the spotlight from his partner—when it rightly belongs on her.”
Prentiss had equally kind words to say about Benjamin, explaining, “We’re starting ahead of the game because our rapport is already established and you have to have a special rapport in comedy. I function best when I’m working with Dick. I’m most at ease, most comfortable. If I have a funny line, I get the best response from him. We’re right together.”
Benjamin and Prentiss frequently made media appearances as a couple, and after He & She was canceled, they continued to work as a team, appearing together in the film adaptation of Catch-22 (1970) and playing husband and wife in the horror-comedy Saturday the 14th (1981). They also shared the screen in the TV movies No Room to Run (1978) and Packin’ It In (1983).
Maintaining a legendarily long marriage
Benjamin and Prentiss navigated their share of challenges, starting with being rushed into marriage by MGM, and their relationship was put to the test when Prentiss suffered a nervous breakdown during the filming of What’s New Pussycat? in 1965 and had to spend nine months in the hospital. Looking back at this time in a 1976 People interview, the Westworld star said, “When Paula was sick, people wondered why I didn’t leave her. And when I wasn’t working they wondered why she didn’t leave me. People all along have tried to come between us. It took a long time to figure out that it was their problem, not ours.”
Going through such a harrowing experience only strengthened the bond between Benjamin and Prentiss, and they had a son, Ross in 1974, and a daughter, Prentiss, in 1978. Ross followed in his parents’ footsteps and became an actor, while Prentiss became a dance teacher.
It’s hard to think of a Hollywood couple that’s been together longer than Prentiss and Benjamin, and reflecting on their many decades together in a 2019 interview, the Stepford Wives actress said, “It’s amazing I found someone in college . . . I think the best part of being together is there are ups and downs in the business. He’s so funny and very kind, and we have huge arguments. We know we have been there so many times, including on the honeymoon in Rome. But somehow you know there is an end to the argument. You hang in there.”
Hanging in there has worked well for the celebrity couple, and we love that they’ve supported each other from the very beginning, and have been partners in life and art from their early 20s to their late 80s.
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