Betty White Doesn't Regret Not Having Children: "I'm Focused on My Career"
Updated Jan. 17 2021, 1:30 p.m. ET
Actress and comedian Betty White cemented herself as a pop-cultural icon with appearances in hit shows like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Golden Girls, and Hot in Cleveland.
She earned countless awards since the beginning of her career in 1939. In the early 1950s, she became the first woman to produce a sitcom, Life with Elizabeth. Since 2014, she has held the Guinness World Record for the longest TV career for an entertainer (female). Even so, fans have wondered: Does she have children?
Betty White doesn't have children — partly because she wanted to focus on her career.
Betty landed one of her first roles in a high school production, as per National Public Radio. It's understood that the performance made it into an experimental TV show.
"I think that's when the show biz bug bit me — and they haven't been able to get rid of me since," she told the outlet.
She became the 'Girl Friday' on Hollywood on Television in 1949, and there's been no way of stopping her ever since.
In 1952, Betty founded her first production company, Bandy Productions, with George Tibbles and Don Fedderson. She was around 30 years old at the time.
Her personal life didn't stay in the background, but her first two marriages ended in divorce.
Betty got married to pilot Dick Barker in 1945. Having spent a few months on his chicken farm in Ohio, Betty recognized she wasn't cut out for the lifestyle. As an anecdote has it, she fled the farm, filing for divorce the same year.
Betty tied the knot with Hollywood agent Lane Allen in 1947. They split up after two years.
Betty met her third husband, Allen Ludden, on the set of a popular game show, Password.
She turned down Allen's engagement proposals at least twice, but she said yes the third time around. They tied the knot in June 1963, at an intimate-feeling ceremony held at the former Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nev.
"When you have the best who needs the rest? It was very special. But that doesn't keep you from having somebody and going out and having dates and ... Robert Redford never calls," Betty remembered her late husband in an interview with CBS News.
"I'm focused on my career," Betty explained in a previous interview.
It's understood that Betty and Allen stayed together for around two decades, until Allen's death in 1981.
He and Betty raised three kids, David, Martha, and Sarah, from Allen's previous marriage with Margaret McGloin.
"No, I've never regretted [not having kids]. I'm so compulsive about stuff. I know if I had ever gotten pregnant, of course, that would have been my whole focus. But I didn't choose to have children because I'm focused on my career. I just don't think, as compulsive as I am, that I could manage both," Betty told CBS News.
The compulsiveness worked out in Betty's favor, to say the least. She won several Primetime Emmy Awards, a Daytime Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, and various Screen Actors Guild Awards.
