The Beautiful Story of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara's 61-Year Marriage
Before he was ever known as George Constanza's loudmouthed father on Seinfeld, Jerry Stiller, 90, got his big break on the variety show circuit as one-half of the comedy duo Stiller and Meara — wife Anne Meara being the other half. The couple based the characters they portrayed in their comedy routines — the short, Jewish Hershey Horowitz and the tall, Catholic Mary Elizabeth Doyle — on their own relationship. Much like their creators, the fictional couple had "virtually nothing in common except their love for each other." Audiences adored their comedic chemistry, the way they bickered and poked fun at each other's Irish and Jewish ethnicities. At the height of Stiller and Meara's popularity in the '60s and '70s, they performed on the Ed Sullivan Shows a total of 36 times. Even after ditching the duo routine to focus on their individual careers, Stiller and Meara still managed to reunite throughout the decades, on such sitcoms as Rhoda, Archie Bunker's Place, and King of Queens. Their 61-year marriage, which lasted until Meara's death in 2015, produced countless hours of comedic entertainment and two children, actress and comedian Amy Stiller and actor-writer-director Ben Stiller.
Born in Brooklyn to parents of Polish and Western Ukrainian heritage, Jerry Stiller attended high school in Manhattan's Lower East Side before serving in the Army towards the end of World War II. He attended Syracuse University on the G.I. Bill, graduating with a degree in speech and drama in 1950, before returning to New York City. It was there, in the spring of 1953, that he met Anne Meara after she burst out of a theatrical agent's office in tears because the man had chased her around his desk, according to the Los Angeles Times. Stiller took her out for coffee and listened as she vented about the degenerate men of New York, he revealed in his memoir, Married to Laughter.
"I really knew this was the man I would marry," Meara told People in 2000. "I knew he would never leave me."
Meara, who grew up on Long Island in a Roman Catholic family, was a stage actress who'd started her career a couple earlier after studying at the New School in Manhattan. At the time, she working mostly in summer stock, theatres that only present productions in the summer. She and Stiller tied the knot that fall.
It didn't take long for the newlyweds to realize their union was an unlikely one. Her easygoing personality contrasted with his intense nature, their religious and ethnic backgrounds were completely different, and there was the fact that she was two inches taller. "People would say to Anne, 'Heh, you're married to him?' I thought we could use it," Stiller said of developing their comedy routine.
"Anne's very quicksilver. She moves rapidly and makes a choice. Jerry will stop and think," Valerie Harper once said of her pals. "But the result is the same: they are committed to getting it good. Neither of them ever phones it in."
Comedy was never the goal for Meara, who had her sights on drama, winning an Obie Award for her performance in M?dchen in Uniform in 1955, but she gave comedy a shot when Stiller floated the idea. "Jerry started us being a comedy team," Meara told the New York Times. "At that time in my life, I disdained comedians."
"I didn't even know for sure that she was funny," Stiller admitted to People. They started with the improv group the Compass Players, which later became Second City, and were performing in New York nightclubs by 1961. Meara gave birth to their daughter, Amy, that same year, shortly after converting to Judaism. "I wanted my children to know who they were," she said of her decision to convert.
The funny couple became a national sensation after their first performance on the Ed Sullivan Show in April 1963, about a modern-day Jonah swallowed by a whale off the coast of California. Viewers loved it so much they were invited back dozens of times over the next 15 years. "Ed Sullivan brought us up to the level that we never knew we could get to—him standing there on the right side of the wings laughing, tears coming out of his eyes," Stiller told the Los Angeles Times.
In one sketch, Hershey and Mary Elizabeth try to one-up each other in their resentment, trading insults about each other's friends and ancestors, and starting a countdown for divorce. It culminates with him calling her ex a 'mushface.' She responds by calling him a "matzo head."
The appearances, at least for Anne, were nerve-wracking. She never liked Ed Sullivan, she revealed in 2010, and was actually terrified of him. "I wasn't the only one. There were international favorites from all over the world throwing up in the wings — singers and tenors and guys who spin plates. It was live. We were scared," she said.
After one performance, Stiller recalled, Sullivan motioned them over: "You know, we got a lot of mail on that last show that you did," he said. From Catholics or Jews? Stiller wanted to know. "The Lutherans," Sullivan said.
By 1966, the year after their son, Ben, was born, Stiller and Meara were financially secure enough to purchase a seven-and-a-half room co-op on the Upper West Side — a place they would call home for 30-plus years.
"It wasn't the typical family setup," Ben Stiller would later recall. "We got to stay up late and go to TV studios. It was like this fun fantasyland. But we had no idea how hard they worked."
By 1970, Stiller and Meara split up—professionally, that is. Musical variety shows were going the way of the dinosaurs and Meara disliked leaving their young children to go on the road. For both parties, the decision was a relief. "I love Anne, but if I had depended on her in my professional life, I would have lost her as a wife," Jerry told People in 1977. "I didn't know where the act ended and our marriage began," said Meara.
She kicked off the next chapter of her career in television. She was nominated for an Emmy for her recurring role on Rhoda as the main character's flight attendant friend Sally Gallagher, and held a supporting role opposite Caroll O'Connor in the 1980s sitcom Archie Bunker's Place. She was nominated for a Tony her work in Eugene O'Neill's 1993 play Anna Christie starring Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson.
Stiller is perhaps best known today for his roles on Seinfeld and King of Queens, as well as his performance in the movie Zoolander opposite son Ben. That's not to say that audiences never got another taste of Stiller and Meara's witty banter: the couple reunited on-screen several times including for Archie Bunker's Place (Stiller played Meara's character's ex-husband) and King of Queens (their characters married in the series finale).
"We did miss our back and forth," Meara told the Los Angeles Times. "I love improvising with him."
The couple's 61-year marriage ended with Meara's death on May 23, 2015. The family gave no cause of death but some reports cite natural causes. "I miss her," Stiller said later that year. "There were no walls between us in any way. We both knew what the other was thinking even when we weren't listening."
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