‘Brady Bunch’ star reveals how Hollywood marriage has lasted 4 decades

Maureen McCormick, who famously starred as Marcia Brady in “The Brady Bunch,” celebrated her 40th wedding anniversary this year. The actress and her husband, Michael Cummings, say the secret to a lasting union under the Hollywood spotlight is surprisingly simple.

“You’ve got to have a sense of humor about things,” the actor recently told People at The John Ritter Foundation’s Evening from the Heart Gala in Los Angeles.

“You can’t take things too seriously,” he said. “You’ve got to let things go and just love the one you’re with. It’s a lifetime deal.”

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“Celebrate the differences,” McCormick also told the outlet. She revealed they both knew “right away” they wanted to build a forever together.

It also helped that Cummings wasn’t starstruck by McCormick’s TV fame when they first met.

“I didn’t know who she was, but I liked what I saw,” he said. “I saw those eyes and just fell in love.”

McCormick said that his lack of knowledge about her acting career was “very refreshing to me.”

“… [He had] no preconceived ideas about who I was,” said the former child star. “It was really wonderful.”

“Ever since I was little, I wanted to get married and find somebody,” said McCormick, 69. “It’s just the craziest thing, but I looked at his eyes, we were at a concert, and I just felt like he was the one.”

The couple started dating in the 1980s. They married in 1985 and welcomed their daughter, Natalie Michelle Cummings, in 1989.

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Over the years, they’ve prioritized family over fame.

“Honestly, we haven’t stopped celebrating [our anniversary], because I think it’s taken a lot of work to be [in] this place in our relationship,” said McCormick. “It’s better than ever. We feel very grateful and thankful to have found each other.”

McCormick starred in “The Brady Bunch” for five seasons from 1969 to 1974. She reprised her role in several spinoff specials and films, later appearing on shows like “The Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island.” She also competed on “Dancing with the Stars” in 2016.

In February, McCormick called Cummings her “forever Valentine” in a heartfelt Instagram post.

In 2024, McCormick spoke about being sober for more than 40 years and said she wouldn’t have it any other way.

At the time, she told Us Weekly she felt “incredibly lucky” to have found sobriety after falling into drug addiction when “The Brady Bunch” ended.

“It’s not easy in the beginning at all, but it gets better every day,” she said at the time.

McCormick said sobriety has “been everything to me.” She also credited her husband with helping her get clean.

“I’m so happy to be sober and to be really clear and comfortable in my skin,” she said. “My husband was a big part of that for me, along with my mom, dad, family and some really close friends.”

“I feel very blessed to have him in my life,” she added, referring to Cummings.

The road to sobriety was not smooth for McCormick. For five years, she struggled with a cocaine addiction, which she detailed in her 2008 memoir, “Here’s the Story.”

“I had played Marcia Brady for five years. But I wasn’t her in any way, shape or form. She was perfect. I was anything but that,” McCormick wrote, as quoted by The Telegraph.

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“I sought refuge in seemingly glamorous cocaine dens above Hollywood,” she admitted. “I thought I would find answers there, while, in reality, I was simply running farther from myself. From there, I spiraled downward on a path of self-destruction that cost me my career and very nearly my life.”

“Over the years I battled drug addiction and bulimia,” she wrote. “I was treated in a psych ward, went in and out of rehab, and looked to God for answers … If there was coke, I had to stay up and do every last flake, even if it meant going without sleep for days. Nothing else mattered.”

In 2018, McCormick told Us Weekly that her parents “almost turned me in to the cops.”

“They had been trying for years and knew something was going on,” she said. “I was pretty sneaky, and I could hide very, very well. But then I started messing up on jobs and so many things, so I’m sure everyone in the industry at the time knew that I was flaking out.”

It was Cummings, she told the outlet, who gave her an ultimatum after her last relapse.

“He came to me and said, ‘If you ever do this drug again, I’m gone, I’m leaving,’” McCormick recalled. “It woke me up. It was like the coldest shower you could ever take. There’s just no way I’m gonna lose somebody that I love.”