Desperate for work, Jennifer accepted the job even though it meant traveling to a different city every day. She thanked the HR manager and headed home, where she told her kids she had finally found a job. After spending almost $30 on the cab ride, Jennifer realized she couldn’t afford to commute like that every day. It would be better to have her own car, but she didn’t have the money to buy one. She decided her best option was to buy a used car. She found one but wondered if the owner would agree to sell it for a lower price. “Would you be able to sell this car for $5,000? I’m a single mom with four kids,” she asked.
She explained that it had been hard for her to make money as a single mom of four, and she needed a car to take a job in a nearby city. When the owner heard about her situation, he agreed to sell the car for $5,000. “If you can buy the car by tomorrow, I’ll sell it to you for $5,000,” he said. Jennifer was very grateful for the lower price. She tried to get a loan from the bank to buy the car the next day, but her bad credit caused the loan to be rejected immediately.
Running out of options, Jennifer thought hard about what to do next. She couldn’t move to a new city because her oldest child, Ethan, had just started school near their trailer park. Also, rent in the nearby city was much higher, and she couldn’t take the trailer with her. She really needed a car to get to work and pick up her children from school and daycare. Then she remembered the gold chain necklace her late mother had left her, which had been in the family for generations. Even though it made her sad, Jennifer knew she had to sell it to buy the car and provide for her children.
She took the necklace to a pawnshop and said, “I’m sorry, Mom. I really need to do this right now.” The necklace was valued at $5,500, which made Jennifer happy because it was enough to buy the car and have some money left for daily needs. The next day, she went back to the car dealership and gave the owner, Jeff, an envelope with $5,000. “Thank you for agreeing to sell this to me. You have no idea how much this will help me and my children,” she said.
Jeff smiled and said, “Congratulations on your car. This is a great purchase.” While Jennifer was signing the paperwork, Jeff quietly put something in the trunk of the car. As she was about to drive home, he called out, “By the way, check the trunk when you get home. I left something for your children inside.” Jennifer was so busy commuting to work and taking care of her children that she forgot to check the trunk until she found a note in the glove compartment. The note said, “I hope you and your children like the gift I left in the trunk. May it be of great help to you.”
Curious, Jennifer opened the trunk and was confused at first when she saw only a white envelope. Then she realized it was the same envelope she had used to pay for the car. Inside, she found the $5,000 untouched. Overwhelmed by the man’s kindness, Jennifer drove back to the dealership after work to thank Jeff. He told her, “Life throws challenges at you, and it’s up to you to either overcome them or give in. I’m proud of you for staying strong for your children, and I thought you could use the money more than I could. Just remember to pay it forward.”
Lucie Arnaz is proud of her ‘15,695 days’ marriage and ‘5 kids’ – she survived famous parents’ horrible divorce
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz are perhaps one of the most famous couples in television history. Their romance continued off-screen as well. Their marriage was famously tumultuous, and no one knows that better than their daughter Lucie Arnaz.
Keep reading to know more about their daughter and how her life turned out over the years.
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were perhaps the most beloved couple on American television at one time. Their show I Love Lucy depicted them as the Ricardos, a middle-class couple that were the ideal nuclear family.
The show had six seasons and ran from 1951 to 1957. It followed Lucille as Lucy Ricardo, a housewife who always gets into hilarious situations. While the couple seemed perfect in their on-screen depiction, in real life, their relationship was quite volatile.
The former Broadway star and the Cuban bandleader met while filming Too Many Girls. Their whirlwind six-month romance led to an elopement and marriage in November 1940.
After over a decade of their marriage, the couple became parents to daughter Lucie Arnaz, born on July 17, 1951. Two years after that, on January 19, 1953, they became parents to their second child, their son Desi Arnaz Jr.
The two children joined their parents in the family business of acting. They starred alongside their mother in the spin-off shows for I Love Lucy. Then in May 1961, after nearly two decades together, the couple filed for divorce.
It took years for Lucie Arnaz to open up about the reality of her parents’ marriage and their subsequent divorce. She revealed in a 2018 interview how “They were fighting all the time when we were growing up. There was a lot of anger and screaming.”
She lamented at her childhood where she had to deal with so many issues, she said, “Their divorce was horrible. And then there was the alcoholism. I had preferred those things had never been there. We didn’t have any abuse, but we did go through some pretty hard stuff, and that’s why my parents didn’t stay together. “
Lucille felt the split even more than perhaps her husband because she felt she had shattered the perception the American public had of her. She remarried soon after to comedian Gary Morton.
In her early twenties in 1971, Lucie Arnaz tied the knot to “The Doctors” actor Philip Vandervort Menegaux. The marriage ended in divorce five years later
But the younger Arnaz’s second try at marriage was much more lasting. She met and married actor and writer Laurence Luckinbill. Now the couple has been together for over four decades.
On June 22, 2023, Lucie celebrated her 43rd wedding anniversary with Luckinbill. She took to Instagram to remember the day many decades ago that she was last single on an apple farm in the coastal city of Kingston, New York.
Their friends and family arrived at the venue in a “big yellow school bus.” She was wearing a “lovely cream crocheted gown” as her father walked her down the aisle. She continued in her post, “…[I] vowed to love Laurence Luckinbill till death us do part. 15,695 days, 5 kids, and three grandchildren later, I am proud to still say,’‘ I do.’”
The Murder, She Wrote actress is still very much in love with her husband. She dedicated a sweet post to him on his 88th birthday late last year in November 2022. She posted a picture of him and wrote how he was “kind, talented, adorable, wise, [and] sexy.”
Luckinbill had two children from a previous marriage; Nicholas Luckinbill and Benjamin Luckinbill. And him and Lucie had three more children together; two sons and a daughter.
Their first child together Simon Thomas Luckinbill was born in December 1980, Joseph Henry Luckinbill was born on New Year’s Eve 1982, and their daughter Katharine Desirée Luckinbill was born on January 11, 1985.
Lucie Arnaz and her husband live in Palm Springs, and their family lives nearby. These days the actress wears her hair in a short pixie cut and spends her time with her beloved grandchildren.
On Grandparents Day in 2019, Arnaz joked about hitting the “jackpot” when the couple welcomed their first two grandchildren just four weeks apart from one another. Since then, they have welcomed many more grandchildren to their brood.
Lucie has been a second-generation actor. She was only 11 years old when she starred alongside her mother in The Lucy Show at 11 opposite her mother, which they then followed up with Here’s Lucy.
She also played the main character in the television movie Who Is the Black Dahlia? and also led in the short-lived comedy The Lucie Arnaz Show in 1985 as psychologist Dr. Jane Lucas.
She has played other roles in guest starring parts in shows such as, Marcus Welby, M.D., Murder, She Wrote, Fantasy Island, Law & Order, and the reboot of Will & Grace.
She has also been credited as a producer in three stories related to her parents. Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie, I Love Lucy’s 50th Anniversary Special, and Being the Ricardos. She also produced the 2003 documentary The Desilu Story.
In June 2023 she revealed that she will be doing an encore of her cabaret act titled I Got The Job! Songs From My Musical Past, at 54 Below in New York City. She had performed the show before the pandemic to a sold-out crowd.
While Lucie is very public about her life, her little brother Desi Arnaz Jr. is quite private about his. When Lucille Ball was pregnant with Arnaz Jr, her pregnancy was written into the show. And as fate would have it, she gave birth to him the same day the episode aired in which her character gave birth to ‘Little Ricky.’
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