How General Hospital didn’t hook up Nikolas and Brenda during their portrayers’ long runs on the show, we’ll never understand. A more gorgeous couple, there might never have been. In real life, the former castmates became much closer than they did on screen and were even briefly engaged.
After being paired by Passions as Theresa and Fox in 2003, sparks flew between the co-stars, they started dating and, within six months, were engaged. It wasn’t until nine years and several other shows (Days of our Lives, Revenge, etc.) later that irreconcilable differences tore apart the golden couple.
During the future Glee star’s short run as Adam on As the World Turns, he popped the question to the future ex-Mrs. Justin Hartley, who at the time was playing All My Children’s Amanda. But “I decided to break off our engagement,” she told Star, “because I believed…he just wasn’t ready to fully commit.”
Couples didn’t get much couple-ier than these former One Life to Live castmates. They were paired on the soap as Rex and Gigi, they appeared together on the reality show Dirty Soap, and, of course, they were one another’s significant other when the cameras weren’t rolling, too. But after five years, their real-life storyline ended.
Days of our Lives struck pay dirt in more ways than one when it paired these two as Nicole and Brady — the co-stars lost their hearts to one another off screen as well. Only after 12 years of marriage did Zucker and Lowder (who now plays Rex) divorce. She’s since begun a romance with another of her leading men, Shawn Christian (ex-Daniel).
As the World Turns brought together Barbara’s portrayer with her future husband when he was cast as Brian McColl in 1984. Though he moved on to other soaps (most notably Another World, where he played Grant for nearly a decade), their marriage endured — for almost 23 years — until she filed for divorce in 2010.
After meeting at General Hospital during his stint as Johnny, Barash (who now plays Days of our Lives’ Jake) and Storms (GH’s Maxie) revealed to People in August 2013 that they’d not only secretly wed but were expecting a daughter. “It feels,” he told the magazine, “like a fairy tale.” Sadly, the fairy tale ended, albeit amicably, in 2016.
As we were falling in love with General Hospital’s Ned and Lois in the mid-1990s, their portrayers were falling for each other. But alas, two years after marrying, Kurth (who currently appears on not only GH but Days of our Lives as Justin) and Sofer (who now plays The Bold and the Beautiful’s Quinn) untied the knot.
Soapdom’s It couple during the mid-’80s, the Emmy winners (who at the time were playing Days of our Lives’ Frankie and Santa Barbara’s Eden, respectively) split after two years. “He needs — and deserves — a lot of everything,” she told Soap Opera Digest in 1988. “I was just not the person who was able to give it to him.”
Though they married in 1993 and divorced in 2006, General Hospital’s Felicia and Frisco have remained close. In fact, the parents of two sons not only re-teamed on the soap for its 50th anniversary in 2013, they’ve also co-starred together on the Hallmark Channel’s When Calls the Heart.
Advertisement
