Melissa Gilbert and Timothy Busfield got married in 2013. The proposal took place in Michigan at Busfield’s family friend’s cabin. It was simple, quiet, and just the two of them. After Busfield asked, Gilbert’s one request was that he do it again the next day.
Melissa Gilbert lived in LA and Timothy Busfield lived in Michigan when they started dating
Gilbert and Busfield started dating shortly after officially meeting one night at a bar. For both actors, who’d recently divorced their second spouses, it was a connection that felt right immediately. The only problem was that they lived in different states. Gilbert lived in Los Angeles and though Busfield often was in LA for work, he lived in Michigan. He’d moved there after a rough divorce from second wife Jenny Merwin.
Luckily, when Gilbert and Busfield started dating, the Little House on the Prairie alum had recently begun thinking she needed to make some serious changes to her life. Those changes included getting out of LA. So they started spending time in Busfield’s one-bedroom cabin-like home on a lake in Holly, Michigan.
How Timothy Busfield asked Melissa Gilbert to marry him
For New Year’s, Gilbert, her son Michael, and Busfield spent the week at Busfield’s family friend’s cabin in Michigan.
Gilbert and Busfield stayed in the family’s guest room. On New Year’s, as the couple was getting into bed. Busfield looked at Gilbert and simply said: “Marry me.” Without hesitation, the Laura Ingalls actor said “Okay.”
In Gilbert’s 2022 memoir, Back to the Prairie, the actor says the couple “held each other at the foot of the bed for a long time.” Then, she asked: “Will you please do me a favor? Will you please ask me again in the morning when we are fully awake, fresh, and clearheaded?”
He said, “Of course.”
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Melissa Gilbert didn’t question her decision to marry Timothy Busfield for a second
After Busfield agreed to ask his girlfriend to marry him again in the morning, the couple got into bed, turned off the lights, kissed, said “I love you,” and went to bed spooning, as they do every night.
“I would love to tell you that I stayed up all night worrying about whether I was making the right decision,” wrote Gilbert. “Or that I was creating a very sensible list of pros and cons in my head and that I was weighing those pros and cons logically and methodically. The truth is, I slept like a baby that night. I slept like that because I knew in my skin, in my bones, and in my soul that we were meant to be together.”
Since they’d met, and especially since they’d started dating, Gilbert had the suspicion that she and Busfield were soulmates.
“Yes, ours was a union of passion and fire and all those fun exciting things, but at its core there was/is the inevitability of two souls that have met and re-met over several lifetimes. It’s kind of hard to put into words. I’ll just say that it felt… well…like destiny.”
When the couple woke in the morning, Busfield was quick to ask Gilbert to marry him, again. “Yes, of course I will,” she replied.
Read more about Gilbert’s life and marriage in Back to the Prairie: A Home Remade, A Life Rediscovered.
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