Little House on the Prairie alum Melissa Gilbert was married to her second husband How the West Was Won actor Bruce Boxleitner from 1995 to 2011. They met through Boxleitner’s ex and got married pretty quickly. But after 16 years, Gilbert began noticing a lack of care from her then-husband.
Melissa Gilbert broke her back in ‘Little House on the Prairie: The Musical‘
When Gilbert was acting as Laura Ingalls’ mother in the musical of Little House on the Prairie, she was diagnosed with a herniated disc in her lower back. She took some time off to heal but eventually returned to participate in the national tour. After slipping on the fake snow used in the production, her back pain became unbearable. She needed to receive steroids every few weeks. Her leg would sometimes give out when she was on stage. She required epidural nerve blocks to keep going.
When the tour finally ended she went to Dr. Robert Bray, who performed her neck surgery in 2003. Dr. Bray told her that her back was broken. And that she needed surgery.
But when her husband at the time, Boxleitner, was called to take her home, he asked if she could hire a car or ask a friend.
‘Postsurgical care and compassion was not Bruce’s specialty’
When Gilbert got out of surgery, she knew that “postsurgical care and compassion was not Bruce’s specialty.” But she began considering if that was a quality she wanted in a partner.
“I could recover without his support and compassion, but the question I suddenly asked myself was, Why? Why was it okay for me not to be cared for? What made me feel that I didn’t deserve to have that in my life?” Gilbert wrote in her 2022 memoir Back to the Prairie.
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Throughout Gilbert’s recovery, she thought a lot about her marriage to Boxleitner.
It was during a family trip to Hawaii after Gilbert was feeling better that she really knew it was over. The actor writes that her then-husband mostly kept to himself on the trip and did his own thing. And when the family hiked to the top of a volcano, as they were taking in the view, Gilbert reached for Boxleitner’s hand. But he “pushed [hers] away.”
“Neither of us was truly happy, and after spending years going in and out of therapy alone and as a couple, I didn’t see the situation changing,” she wrote.
Melissa Gilbert and Bruce Boxleitner’s divorce
Gilbert writes that the separation was painful for both of them, as well as their entire family. But Gilbert and Boxleitner were intent on keeping things from getting ugly. So they didn’t hire lawyers—they brought in a mediator. The mediator set three days aside to help the former couple figure everything out, but they got it done in three hours.
“Bruce and I had already promised to simply walk away and not take or demand anything from each other… We had lunch together at Jerry’s Deli and walked away friends.”
Read more about Gilbert’s life and relationships in Back to the Prairie: A Home Remade, A Life Rediscovered
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