John and Amy Ritter would have celebrated their 18th wedding anniversary today- so we take a look back over their marriage.
John and Amy Ritter (Credit: Famous)
1. Ritter married actress Yasbeck on 18th September 1999 at the Murphy Theatre in Wilmington, Ohio.
2. They had a daughter together, Stella Dorothy, who was born on 11th September 1998, a year before they wed.
3. The pair reportedly first met at Dennis Dugan's house who was directing the 1990 movie Problem Child- they went there for read through.
4. Yasbeck recalls that Ritter forced her to eat a bagel and cream cheese because he thought she needed to gain weight.
5. He was also unsure whether she was too young to play his wife as she was 14 years his junior.
6. Yasbeck played Ritter's love interest in Problem Child and Problem Child 2 and also played his wife in two sitcom appearances.
7. In 1991, they both guest starred on The Crosby Show eight years before they got married. Yasbeck played the pregnant wife of Ritter's basketball coach character.
8. In 1996, Ritter starred in Yasbeck's sitcom, Wings, as the husband of her character, Casey in an episode called 'Love Overboard'. Yasbeck concluded; "After you play husband and wife on camera multiple times, it becomes easy to be husband and wife off camera as well." (IMDB)
9. On their daughter's birthday, Ritter fell into a coma while he was doing rehearsals for 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter. The paramedics took him into hospital and he drifted in and out of consciousness. It was said that Ritter suffered a heart attack; however he died later that night. His cause of death was confirmed as an aortic dissection caused by a congenital heart defect that had been previously undiagnosed.
10. Yasbeck allowed the sitcom to continue and Katey Sagal's character was rewritten as a widow.
RIP John Ritter.
Source: Wikipedia and IMDB.