The Early Wedding Years

In 1980, a "Saturday Night Live" knockoff, "Fridays", debuted on ABC and in February of 1981 and 1982, Valerie Bertinelli guest-hosted the show. No details about the sketches are available.

In 1981, the biggest rage of the year was the Space Shuttle's maiden flight, Rubik's Cube, Dallas was a huge hit, Dynasty was a hit, and that year would be one of the banner years marriage wise in fantasy and reality.

The year was 1981, the same year the whole wide world would witness the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, and, of course, who could forget the fictional wedding of Luke and Laura on General Hospital? Well, Genie Francis was among my favs around the year, but the only other wedding of note happened to another favorite of mine.

A few months after she met Eddie, Valerie was soon brandishing a one-carat emerald-cut diamond engagement ring.

On April 11, 1981, the day before the first Space Shuttle take-off into orbit, after a nine-month whirlwind courtship, Valerie married rock and roll guitarist Eddie Van Halen, who she met the previous summer at a concert, at St. Paul the Apostle in Westwood, California. They wed in a traditional service in front of 450 relatives and friends.

The rock star and the All-American girl was less of a culture clash than her fans might think. For Valerie, what attracted her to Eddie, and has kept them together for over 17 years at last count in 1998, was how comfortable she feels around him and the strong emotional support they share. Valerie says she just knew that this is the man she wants to spend the rest of her life with; she just wanted to do it and get over with it and live it all her life.

As luck would have it, Valerie's real-life wedding happened within two years that her character Barbara Cooper got married on "One Day at a Time".

Why this marriage was hushed up by CBS publicists I'm not sure, but for my opinion of this matter, I see no reason why this had to remain a secret by the suits at the network. Would her popularity waned because of this? It didn't. It must have been destiny that Valerie would marry Eddie as we shall see why in the later years.

Valerie says that when they got married, then it really started that the marriage won't last, they're going to be divorced in six months, then divorced in two years, and still after 10 years, they're still saying divorce. They don't know who Ed is (who is They anyway?), they don't know who Val is, so they just figured they're not right for each other. They took vows to be together forever and there they are.

Would a marriage to a rock star hurt Valerie's clean-cut image? At first, some executives (as in suits, corporates) thought it might, but then decided to play up her character's wedding to capitalize on the hoopla surrounding her offscreen marriage.

In October 3, 1982, the fictional Barbara Cooper and her TV fiance Mark Royer on the show "One Day At A Time" got married and the episode remained one of the show's highest-rated in the show's run. Although the TV wedding was a huge ratings success, what Valerie's fans really wanted to know was what was it like to be Mrs. Eddie Van Halen?

That same year, Valerie won her second Golden Globe award (her first in 1981), and she and Eddie continued to beat the odds and live a very happy and very normal newlywedded life. In 1983, Valerie was nominated for a Globe again, but lost to someone else I forget.

The November 9th, 1981 issue of PEOPLE WEEKLY featured Valerie Bertinelli on the cover, all ablush about her hubby Eddie Van Halen.