Sandra Madden, Author

A Laugh-A-Minute Marriage

What was it like being married to a comedian?
That’s the question I’m asked most often. Still.
Must have been a laugh a minute!
That’s the comment I hear more than others.
Well, no. Being married to an entertainer is pretty much like being married to any professional.
Marriage to Dave Madden was much like being married to the man I dated in college before his time with Laugh-In and The Partridge Family. A young man fresh from serving his time in the Air Force, Dave’s goal was to be a comic and a comic actor. He told me he wanted to have the sort of career Jack Lemmon enjoyed. Being a dreamer myself, I knew a dreamer when I met one.
Not that that put me off.
When we first met at the University of Miami, Dave was a quiet man, almost shy, considering and studying for a career as a television director. A fallback position – which as it turns out – he didn’t require. (His fallback position was as a successful voice-over actor.)
He took jobs as a stand-up comic in Orlando, Miami and Miami Beach, when he could find them. He went door-to-club door with his resume, while I waited in the car. (Car is a term used loosely here. It ran, mostly.) Although Dave’s brand of stand-up comedy was more politically oriented, a humorist of sorts, he studied and admired Lenny Bruce. (Which I could not understand at the time!)
We married in the Little Brown Church in the Valley (San Fernando)thirty years after college, by then we had a sweet history behind us and fifteen years of good times ahead.
Yes, Dave possessed a broad sense of humor (of course!) Did he have any quirks? (He was an actor! Naturally, he did. But I’ll save quirky for another post.) But as anyone who knew him would tell you, despite his sometimes pranks, my comic husband possessed a serious nature and was never a clown. He was a kind generous soul. Always. Until the day he passed.