TLDR: Suzanne Pleshette spent six seasons playing Emily Hartley on The Bob Newhart Show, but her most interesting story happened off screen. She was married three times, and her final marriage came from a romance that started decades earlier and outlived two other spouses.
Before television, Suzanne Pleshette was already a serious stage actress. She trained under Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse, made her Broadway debut in 1957, and was discovered by Jerry Lewis, who cast her in her first film.
Alfred Hitchcock gave her the role that made her a name, casting her as the doomed schoolteacher in The Birds in 1963.
By the time she landed Emily Hartley in 1972, she’d already built a real career in film and on stage, and her sharp-witted, independent take on a TV wife helped modernize how married women were written on network sitcoms.
Her First Marriage Lasted Eight Months
Pleshette’s first husband was Troy Donahue, her co-star from the films Rome Adventure and A Distant Trumpet. They married in January 1964 after a three-year courtship, and separated just five months later.
She filed for divorce citing mental cruelty and explicitly declined to request alimony, and the marriage was legally over by September 1964.
Donahue struggled with serious alcoholism and had a documented history of volatile relationships, but publicly, both Pleshette and Donahue downplayed the split for decades afterward, and she later described him warmly as a man who’d simply taught her how to laugh.
Her Second Husband Talked Her Into Coming Back to TV
She married Texas oilman and real estate developer Tom Gallagher in 1968, and the marriage lasted 31 years. Early on, Pleshette stepped back from acting, and it was Gallagher who pushed her to return, joking that she was getting boring sitting at home.
That nudge directly led to her casting in The Bob Newhart Show a short time later. The couple never had surviving children after a miscarriage, and the marriage ended only when Gallagher died of lung cancer in January 2000.
Her Third Marriage Started 42 Years Earlier Than It Looked
Pleshette actually met her third husband, actor Tom Poston, back in 1959, when the two co-starred in the Broadway comedy Golden Fleecing and had a brief romance during the run. That romance ended, but the two stayed close friends for the next four decades while each built entirely separate lives and marriages.
Their professional paths crossed again through Bob Newhart himself. Poston played a recurring character on The Bob Newhart Show in the 1970s, then went on to co-star as the handyman George Utley on Newhart’s second sitcom, simply titled Newhart, throughout the 1980s.
After Poston’s second wife died in 1998 and Gallagher died in 2000, the two widowed old friends reconnected, and their friendship turned romantic again. They married in 2001 and stayed together until Poston’s death in 2007.
She Had to Be Smuggled Onto a Set to Keep a Secret
Pleshette’s connection to Poston’s other show produced one of television’s most famous endings. For Newhart’s 1990 series finale, she agreed to secretly reprise her role as Emily Hartley for a final twist revealing the entire eight-season show had been Bob Hartley’s dream.
To protect the surprise, producers smuggled her onto the soundstage hidden under blankets in the back of a car and kept her locked in a trailer until it was time to film.
She later said she hid under the bedcovers on set, listening as the studio audience slowly realized what they were watching once they recognized the old bedroom wallpaper.
She Outlived Poston by Less Than a Year
Pleshette was a longtime smoker who quit after a lung cancer scare in 1998, but the disease caught up with her regardless. She began treatment for lung cancer in 2006, the same general period Poston’s own health was declining.
Poston died first, on April 30, 2007, at age 85.
Pleshette died on January 19, 2008, just twelve days before what would have been her 71st birthday, from respiratory failure caused by the cancer.
On that same birthday, a ceremony already planned before her death gave her a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Bob Newhart, Marcia Wallace, and Arte Johnson all spoke at the unveiling, and Tina Sinatra accepted the star on her behalf.
You can read more about the show that made her famous, and the friend she eventually married, in our full history of Bob Newhart’s two sitcoms.
Suzanne Pleshette, Frequently Asked Questions
Who died first, Tom Poston or Suzanne Pleshette?
Tom Poston died first, on April 30, 2007, at age 85. Suzanne Pleshette died about eight and a half months later, on January 19, 2008.
How long was Suzanne Pleshette married to Tom Poston?
They were married from 2001 until his death in 2007, though they had actually known each other and briefly dated as far back as 1959.
What happened between Suzanne Pleshette and Troy Donahue?
They married in January 1964 after co-starring in two films together, but separated after only five months and divorced by September of that year, making it one of the shortest celebrity marriages of the era.
Was Suzanne Pleshette a smoker?
Yes, she smoked for many years and quit after a lung cancer scare in 1998, though she was later diagnosed with lung cancer in 2006 and died from the disease in 2008.
