TOGETHER AGAIN
Betty White ‘never feared’ death because she was ready to reunite with late husband Allen Ludden, friend claims
LEGENDARY Golden Girls actress Betty White passed away on Friday at 99, shocking fans across the globe.
But Betty didn't "ever fear passing," according to a close friend, because she wanted to be reunited with her late husband, Allen Ludden.
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"Even though Betty was about to be 100, I thought she would live forever," her agent and close friend Jeff Witjas told PEOPLE in a statement on Friday.
"I will miss her terribly and so will the animal world that she loved so much. I don't think Betty ever feared passing because she always wanted to be with her most beloved husband Allen Ludden. She believed she would be with him again."
- whose career spanned over more than nine decades - was 99-years-old, and only weeks from her 100th birthday on January 17th.
Betty and Allen wed in 1963 but he passed away in 1981 from cancer.
Betty has three stepchildren from her third marriage: David, Sarah and Martha.
She married her first husband, Dick Barker, in 1945 but they divorced that same year.
In 1947, Betty married Lane Allen but the pair divorced in 1949.
Her marriage to Allen was her longest.
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'THE PERFECT ONE' AFTER TWO 'MISTAKES'
Betty spent 18 "wonderful" years married to the celebrity game show host before he died of stomach cancer in 1981.
They met in the summer of 1961 on the set of one of Allen's shows, Password.
Betty later expressed how she wished she hadn't turned down her keen future-husband's initial marriage proposals.
Read our Betty White blog for the very latest news and updates...
"I spent a whole year, wasted a whole year, that Allen and I could have had together, saying, 'No, I wouldn't marry him,'" in 2015.
"I wasted a whole year we could have had together, but we made it, we finally did."
Allen's first wife was in the hospital with cancer, and she died the week that he and Betty met on TV.
"I've had two bad marriages, and I don't like to think of them as good mistakes. They were traumatizing to go through," Betty meanwhile once admitted to .
"But they did make me appreciate it when the perfect one came along."
STAGING THEIR ROMANCE
During a 2018 PBS special, Betty could be seen on his show Password.
He asked her about her summer plans and she cheekily responded, “Well, what did you have in mind, Allen?”
Betty explained in a that the following summer, their respective agents booked them parts in a play called Critic’s Choice in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
"Somehow, we became instant friends,” she said.
After the three weeks working on the play, in which Betty got to know Allen's three children and two dogs, he asked Betty to marry him multiple times.
He even greeted her by asking "Will you marry me?" instead of saying "Hello."
Allen later admitted, per , “I fell in love with her opening night.”
He reportedly wore around a ring on a necklace until Betty said yes.
Allen then gifted Betty a stuffed Easter bunny, gold-and-sapphire earrings, and a letter that read, "Now, come on, will you marry me?"
They got married in Las Vegas on June 14, 1963.
BETTY'S FOREVER LOVE
Betty made the decision to never marry again after Allen died of cancer.
She also later said she only waited to marry Allen because she didn't wait to relocate from California to New York.
In 2011, when asked by to say one choice she'd make again, Betty replied:
"Marry Allen Ludden. No two ways about that. He was something special."
She told Anderson Cooper in 2011, “. I sure did. Allen Ludden… If you’ve had the best, who needs the rest?”
'SHE BLOWS HIM A KISS EVERY MORNING'
Allen was born in Wisconsin. He received bachelor's and master's degrees in English from the University of Texas.
He served in the Army during World War II as an officer in charge of entertainment.
After the army he began working in TV.
When he was diagnosed with cancer, Allen took a month off from hosting his long-time show Password for chemotherapy treatment.
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"She keeps a photo of him on her bedside table and blows him a kiss every morning," longtime personal assistant Kiersten Mikelas recently told PEOPLE.
"At night, when she opens the shutters, she blows a kiss to him up in the sky."
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