Mary Steenburgen assumed future husband Ted Danson was ‘slick’ like his ‘Cheers’ character

The risk of everybody knowing your name is that they might make assumptions about you.

That’s exactly what happened to Cheers star Ted Danson when he first met the woman who would become his wife, Mary Steenburgen. As a fan of the long-running sitcom, Steenburgen figured that Danson would be similar to his character, the smooth-talking bartender and former baseball player Sam Malone.

“I don’t know how I was this stupid, but I thought that you were a little bit like Sam Malone,” the Melvin and Howard actress, 71, confessed to Danson, 76, on a recent episode of his Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast. “I thought you were a little bit like that. But my joke is that slick guys don’t say ‘gosharoonie’ after making love.”

Danson didn’t dispute the point, merely saying, “Sorry, kids!” in case his stepchildren were listening.

Steenburgen wasn’t the only one who thought of Danson in terms of his Cheers alter ego. When the two started dating, she decided to inform her ex-husband, Malcolm McDowell, of the new relationship.

“He and I were huge Cheers fans,” Steenburgen said. “He hadn’t exactly loved people I’d gone out with after our divorce. And he could be kind of obvious about it. And then when I started to go out with you, I decided to go tell him quite early on so he wouldn’t hear it from somebody else. And I said, ‘I know you haven’t liked people I’ve gone out with, but the person I’m seeing now is someone I know you like.'”

McDowell asked who it was, “And I said, ‘It’s Ted Danson,'” Steenburgen recalled. “And he goes, ‘Oh, s—.’ Because he didn’t really know you, but he admired you so much as an actor.”

Danson and Steenburgen’s paths had briefly crossed before they got to know each other making the 1994 film Pontiac Moon. But before Steenburgen landed her part, she had to fly to San Francisco to meet with Danson and director Peter Madak to sign off on her casting. She remembered meeting Danson at a Wolfgang Puck restaurant and being shocked by his long hair, which was actually thanks to extensions for his role in Getting Even With Dad.

“You’re walking ahead of me, and you’re tossing your fake hair, as you walk through the restaurant,” Steenburgen recounted to Danson. “You were so attached and so proud of it. And I just remember that my first thought of you besides adoring you on Cheers, was, ‘Well, this is the most ridiculous creature I’ve ever met.'”

Danson quipped, “And from that moment on, folks, I had her.”

The truth is that Danson was intimidated by Steenburgen and immediately wowed by her. “I remember your smile,” he said. “I was just enchanted with you, and proceeded to tell you all my warts and horrible things about me. I remember somebody asked me, ‘What was she like?’ I said, ‘Wow. I mean, I can imagine marrying somebody like that.’ I was just quite taken with you.”

For her part, Steenburgen was pleased to discover that Danson wasn’t anything like Sam Malone. “You’d come to work, and you had paint all over your clothes because you doing these little paintings,” she recalled. “And, I just kept thinking, ‘Wow, he’s not who I pictured.’ Eventually, we actually got time to be friends.”

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Their friendship blossomed while making Pontiac Moon and developed into something more during a canoeing excursion in Montecito, Calif. “We came back not just friends,” Danson shared. “We pulled over and kissed, and then got back into the canoe, and I was smitten. I was a goner at that point.”

She must’ve felt similarly, as the two married not long after in 1995 and have been together ever since.

Listen to Steenburgen on Danson’s podcast above for more.