The Heartbreaking Story Of Valerie Harper And Tony Cacciotti’s Romance

The couple getting married were certainly no ordinary Joes; Cacciotti was a producer and actor, while Harper was a household name in America. She had starred in one of the country’s most beloved TV shows of the 1970s: The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Yes, we are talking about the woman who brought Rhoda Morgenstern to life.

Cacciotti and Harper’s love for one another would blossom after they were brought together by chance. When the latter had needed to shed some pounds for an upcoming film, a personal trainer was required to help get her in tip-top shape for it. And as it turned out, the man who was hired for the job would get her heart racing in more ways than one.

And Cacciotti made quite an impression on Harper – leading to the latter opening up about the new man in her life to the press. In a 1980 interview with People magazine, the actress dropped major hints about her attraction and described her beau as a “beautiful, giving teacher.”

Harper’s account of their romance suggests that Cacciotti made the first move. Indeed, the actress admitted in the same interview that she would always wait for a man to step up in a relationship. She said, “Although I’m a feminist and think it’s terrific to call a man if you’re comfortable, I don’t do it. I don’t set my cap for a guy unless he makes the first move.”

By the time she first met Cacciotti, Harper had fairly recently finalized her divorce with Richard Schaal after a 14-year relationship. The latter was an actor with the Chicago Second City troupe, which Harper had also performed for early in her acting career. But any heartbreak she may have felt from the breakdown of her first marriage would be soothed when Cacciotti arrived on the scene.

Harper was born in Suffern, New York, in 1939 and she was the middle child of three siblings. Initially, the aspiring performer had wanted to become a ballet dancer, and at the age of 16 she began working at Radio City Music Hall’s corps de ballet. Soon after Harper moved over to Broadway, where she toiled as a chorus girl and dancer. Then in 1956 she landed a minor part in the Broadway production of the popular American comic strip Li’l Abner.

Harper also made brief appearances in several other Broadway productions – namely the Lucille Ball-starring Wildcat and Subways Are for Sleeping. And soon after, she landed her first big screen role that same year – making an uncredited appearance as a dancer in the teen movie Rock, Rock, Rock!

But soon Harper would be bitten by the acting bug, and she began to move away from the dancing aspirations of her childhood to seriously pursue it. And this path – in which she was taught by the legendary independent director John Cassavetes – would eventually lead her to Richard Schaal and the Second City troupe.

Harper met Schaal in 1964, and after a whirlwind romance they wed that same year. With the latter the father of a child from his previous marriage, Harper became a step mom to his daughter Wendy. Career wise, her time in the theater proved to be a blessing when six years later Ethel Winant, a casting agent, spotted the actress in Los Angeles and called her in for an audition.

And that trial would see Harper catapulted to major stardom in the U.S. She was encouraged to try for a new TV sitcom which was being cast: The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The actress heeded the call, and the iconic role of Rhoda Morgenstern would soon be hers.

Harper appeared as the feisty New Yorker Rhoda in 93 of the show’s 168 episodes during its hugely successful seven-year run. Her comedic timing came to the fore, and she provided a perfect counterbalance to Mary Tyler-Moore’s rather straitlaced lead character. There was no doubt about it; Harper was now a firm TV favorite.

Harper’s performance as Mary Richards’ Jewish window dresser pal who lived upstairs lead to critical and popular acclaim. Incredibly, the star took home the Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress three times in a row. And the burgeoning popularity of her character would ultimately lead to the creation of the spin-off series Rhoda in 1974.

Harper returned to the Mary Tyler Moore Show from her own star vehicle for two episodes – appearing in 1975’s “Mary Richards Falls in Love” and the aptly titled “The Last Show” two years later. Then in 1978 her own 110-episode series came to an end. But on a more personal note, that year would also bring the collapse of her first marriage.

Harper and Dick Schaal – who also appeared on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and contributed as a writer - filed for divorce after over a decade together. But the separation was highly amicable, and the actress revealed that the pair remained good friends even as the divorce was being finalized. Fortunately for Harper, in the not too distant future she would go on to meet the man who would become the enduring love of her life: Tony Cacciotti.

The son of an Italian family who had immigrated to America, Cacciotti was also born in New York in 1939. And like Harper, he too dreamed of making it in the showbiz industry. He got a minor break when delivering pizzas to the set of The New Treasure Hunt in 1973. The wannabe actor was able to land a role on the quiz show after a chance conversation with producer Chuck Barris.

Several minor roles in movies and television then followed for Cacciotti over the next few years. Perhaps most notably, the actor would grapple in the mud with Burt Reynolds in the acclaimed 1974 football drama The Longest Yard. By 1975 he had also appeared in a number of other TV shows too: including Police Story, Chico and the Man, The Streets of San Francisco and Mannix.

The next few years brought more minor acting roles for Cacciotti – such as playing a truck driver in an episode of the TV series The Blue Knight. He also appeared in the 1977 movie The Last Of The Cowboys. And alongside his stage, film and TV work, Cacciotti also worked as a fitness guru for the stars.

Cacciotti’s expertise as a personal trainer saw him land A-list clients such as John Travolta and Richard Gere – who he helped tone up for the latter’s role in American Gigolo. The fitness guru even went on to write a book about health and fitness: entitled The Cacciotti Method: The Feel-Good-About Yourself Workout. But perhaps most importantly, the role helped him find love with Harper.

As we mentioned earlier, Cacciotti was hired to get Harper in shape for a movie role: the 1979 flick Chapter Two. The film required the star to wear a swimsuit in one scene, and in preparation for that she trained for six days a week with Cacciotti. The chemistry between the pair soon developed, and the latter realized that he had to do something about it. Harper told People in 1980, “We both acted about 16 when he told me it’d be nice for us to get closer.”

In the years that followed, Harper and Cacciotti were regularly seen attending premieres, events and awards shows together. And in 1983 they solidified their commitment to one another by adopting a daughter, Cristina.

In the mid-1980s Harper and Cacciotti set out to work together again, but this time it wasn’t related to health and fitness. The latter had been pursuing a career as an executive producer for a few years, and he got the opportunity to produce a new sitcom starring his soon-to-be wife called Valerie. However, things didn’t exactly go to plan.

Harper starred as working mom and pilot’s wife Valerie Hogan on the show before being sacked by Lorimar Television at the end of season two over a contract dispute. The company then revealed her character would be killed off and replaced. The disagreement had began in summer 1987, after Harper and Cacciotti had attempted to gain a pay increase for the star from Lorimar.

The relative newlyweds then had their mettle seriously tested when they became embroiled in an ugly lawsuit over the pay issue. Over the course of a trying year, Harper was sued for $70 million, and she responded by suing Lorimar and NBC back for more than double that. Eventually, the couple was vindicated when an L.A. Superior Court jury voted unanimously in their favor. Harper alone picked up a cool $1.4 million in lost wages, as well as a considerably higher sum through loss of potential profits.

Cacciotti and Harper’s love for one another remained undimmed throughout the 1990s and 2000s, during which time the latter found work in a variety of TV shows and movies. She would also make a return to theater in an acclaimed role as Tallulah Bankhead in the Matthew Lombardo play Looped. But in 2009 the couple’s life together was turned upside down when Harper was diagnosed with lung cancer.

The news must have come as a bit of a shock to the couple. Harper had never smoked cigarettes in her life, and she’d continued performing on stage and screen as she got closer to her 70th birthday. There may have been a hereditary link, however, as Harper’s own mother had also succumbed to the illness. Nonetheless, Harper and Cacciotti decided not to go public with the news and carried on as normally as they could.

Instead, Harper quietly went into surgery, and a lobe in her lung was successfully taken out. The couple soon got some positive news – numerous scans of the star’s chest came back without any sign of cancer. Harper then continued with her still vibrant career by reprising her role in the Broadway comedy Looped and appearing on a number of TV shows.

But four years on from her first cancer scare, it became apparent that something was amiss with Harper again. During rehearsals for another Broadway run of Looped, she started finding it hard to remember her lines and struggled to speak. Sadly, the star apparently then collapsed on stage during a rehearsal and was taken back to hospital again.

Doctors soon took a scan of Harper’s brain, and it turned out that her cancer had returned. Medical staff discovered that the actress had leptomeningeal carcinomatosis – a condition which is caused when cancer cells spread into the membrane which protects the brain.

Cacciotti was told by doctors that the survival rate among people with leptomeningeal carcinomatosis was around three months on average. Sadly, the devoted husband then faced the agonizing task of having to tell his beloved wife.

But Cacciotti, who’d had difficulty processing death since losing his teenage brother in his youth, didn’t have the strength to tell his wife Harper. As a result, he enlisted the help of their daughter Cristina to break the tragic news. She told AARP The Magazine in 2013, “[Harper] doesn’t have any hang-ups about death. When my stepmother, whom I love so much, died, [Harper] cried, but then said, ‘Well, she’s gone on. She’s in heaven.’”

Harper and Cacciotti decided on a course of chemotherapy, and this time the couple went public with the diagnosis. The popular star was inundated with messages of support, and the treatment that she undertook went much better than expected. Incredibly, Harper exceeded doctors’ expectations and by the fall of 2013 she was taking part in the 17th season of Dancing With The Stars.

Though she didn’t manage to win the popular TV dancing competition, Harper’s won the hearts of the show’s viewers. And talking of her condition, she told Good Morning America at the time, “My doctors and neurologists… they are just delighted that I’m moving in the right direction. As my husband said, ‘Let’s just buy time, Val.’”

But Cacciotti was really struggling to comes to terms with his wife’s diagnosis. The couple’s daughter Cristina explained to Closer Weekly in 2019, “He is terrible when it comes to death. My mom is the center of his world – from personal to professional. She is his everything.”

With continuous treatment and support from her family, Harper refused to completely give up her career. She continued to appear on TV screens - including in an episode of sitcom 2 Broke Girls - and the star lent her voice talents to The Simpsons and American Dad! However, things sadly took a turn for the worse in 2019.

Harper’s health was in rapid decline, and her medical expenses were rising. Her daughter revealed to the Daily Mail in late July that her mom had been in hospital for a total of five weeks in 2019. As a result, a family member set up a GoFundMe page to raise funds for Harper’s medical costs, and over $60,000 was secured. However, it was later closed due to unnamed entertainment industry figures stepping in to foot the bill. But not long after her medical costs were properly covered, doctors then offered the family some difficult advice.

Medical staff recommended that Harper be moved into a hospice for the final chapter of her life, so she could receive the care that she needed. But her devoted husband had other ideas, and he decided against it. Cacciotti then took to Facebook to explain his reasons for for doing so.

“I have been told by doctors to put [Harper] in hospice care and I can’t [because of our 40 years of shared commitment to each other] and I won’t because of the amazing good deeds she has graced us with while she’s been here on Earth,” Cacciotti wrote on the actress’ official Facebook page. He added, “We will continue going forward as long as the powers above allow us, I will do my very best in making [Harper] as comfortable as possible. So as long as I’m able and capable, I’ll be where I belong right beside her.”

Cacciotti had made a solemn promise to be beside his true love right until the very end. And the devoted husband kept to his word – caring for Harper at home until her death on the morning of Friday 30, August 2019, at the age of 80.

Tributes soon poured in for Harper, who had touched the lives of many through her lovable characters like Rhoda and via her own larger-than-life personality. But few will feel the loss more than Cacciotti – her devoted husband of 32 years. The grieving husband got daughter Cristina to pass on his heartfelt message to fans via Twitter. He wrote, “My beautiful caring wife of nearly 40 years has passed away at 10:06 a.m., after years of fighting cancer. She will never, ever be forgotten. Rest in peace, mia Valeria.”