May 19, 1992, was the happiest day in the all-too-short life of Isabella Toscano. Having learned that true love John Black was neither Roman Brady nor the jewel thief Romulus, the two of them tied the knot and ushered into the world son Brady. But the honeymoon ended as quickly as it began when the bride fell victim to a villain even more heartless than Stefano DiMera: cancer.
Though in 2000 Brady (then Kyle Lowder) returned from boarding school significantly older than he should’ve been, John and stepmother Marlena Evans were more concerned that the chip on his shoulder was going to give him poor posture. Batty as it sounds, only in stealing away “Ghoul Girl” Chloe Lane from Uncle Philip Kiriakis did Brady redeem himself.
Ignoring the way that that priest was gazing longingly at the bride — WTH? — Brady and Chloe became husband and wife in 2005… only to become ex-husband and ex-wife not long after they moved to Vienna, where instead of becoming hooked on the Viennese waltz or Vienna sausage, he got addicted to drugs. Somehow, in his mind, this was Chloe’s fault. Yeah, right.
Brady (now Eric Martsolf) advised old flame Nicole Walker to admit to babydaddy EJ DiMera that she’d miscarried. But, fearing that the truth would set her free — of EJ! — she instead strapped on a pregnancy pad and, for as long as she could, passed off archenemy Sami Brady’s newborn as her own. When the harebrained plot went up in smoke, Brady refrained from saying “I told ya so.” Much.
Yeah, we hate to remind Rafe and Gabi Hernandez’s ill-fated sister Arianna (Martsolf’s former Passions leading lady Lindsay Korman-Hartley) that she wasn’t long for this world, but… well, she wasn’t. And her 2009 death by hit-and-run so wrecked fiancé Brady that he began going on benders like they were in his job description.
Never mind that fun headline. After Arianna, it was one heartache after another for Brady. When he did what the headline said and got involved with Mad World Cosmetics mogul Madison James, their wedding day turned tragic after she died in an explosion while he was rescuing Melanie Jonas. Priorities, Brady! Prorities!
Ah, but there was a need — a great one in 2013. After Brady got engaged to dad John’s former lover, Kristen DiMera (then Eileen Davidson), he learned that she was as vile as the rest of her family: She’d raped his stepbrother, priestly Eric Brady. Demolished by the revelation, Brady sucked in his abs as far as they would go and squeezed into a bottle of booze from which he didn’t care if he ever emerged.
They say that two wrongs don’t make a right, but… Actually, that’s true. When Brady married fellow walking disaster Theresa Donovan on a bender in Vegas, it was a whole big mess. She claimed that she was preggers, turned out not to be, then turned out to have been after all, only Kristen had literally swiped the embryo outta her and given birth to baby Tate herself. Is there a Hallmark card for that? No? OK.
On New Year’s Eve of 2015, Brady and drunk driver Eric, as well as Jennifer Horton and Daniel Jonas, were in a car accident that left the good doctor dead and his ticker tick-tick-ticking in Brady’s well-toned chest. It was super dramatic, as you can see. Here, Brady is telling Eric that he’s so upset, he ate his stepbrother’s Jell-O. And it was strawberry, man. Strawberry.
Determined to win back Brady — because it’s not like their history reads like a horror novel or anything — Kristen (by now Stacy Haiduk) said to him, “I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her.” Kidding. Obviously, she did the most her thing possible, donning a Nicole Walker mask to seduce her obsession into remembering how hot they were together. Kinda worked, too.
Poor Brady and Kristen went through a lot. Like, the “a lot” that other “a lots” look at and go, “Mmkay, credit where it’s due. That is a lot.” Following a chaotic baby swap facilitated by his grandpa Victor, they managed to get their baby back… but Kristen, unfamiliar with the saying “Bygones!” insisted on getting herself thrown in the slammer for stabbing the moneybags who’d made their lives such hell.
Fearing that Brady, catnip that he is, might get back together with Chloe, Kristen swapped places with lookalike Susan Banks and began taking one desperate measure (bye, Sarah Horton) after another (“Now I’m Kate Roberts!”) in order to micromanage her boo’s love life. And by “micromanage,” we of course mean “ensure that she’s the only woman in .”
Once Kristen’s (latest) litany of sins was revealed and Philip died in air quotes, the path was clear for Brady and Chloe to be brought back together by a bonkers scheme to expose Leo Stark to his fiancé — her dad, Craig Wesley — as the gold-digging con artist that everyone else already knew that he was. You know, the way most couples reunite.
“Let It Go” being a song that Kristen has never heard, much less sung, she forced Brady to dump Chloe and reunite with her by holding over his head the magical flower that would save the lives of Marlena, Kayla Brady and Kate Roberts. Spoiler alert: It didn’t. Instead, it went missing, giving the local funeral-parlor business its biggest boost since the Salem Stalker’s reign of terror.
As the dust settled in the wake of Eric’s harebrained scheme to help Brady kidnap his and Kristen’s daughter — don’t ask — Chloe’s ex started gravitating back in her direction. But since by then months had passed — or a lifetime in Salem — she had already fallen back in bed as well as love with Stefan DiMera.
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