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.’
My husband had taken this snapshot on my phone while I was asleep, which I discovered when I awoke
Moms are those special creatures who guide us, love us, and would give the world for our well-being. They are often the primary caregivers, providing the first model of emotional behavior for the little ones.
However, while they are always there for their children, moms also go through tough times and sleepless nights.
A woman shared the experience of being a mother and how it drained every atom of her energy, but a single look at her children returned her strength and energy every single time.
She started her story by sharing a photo she found in her phone that her husband took the previous night. It showed her and her young daughter sleeping together. She would usually get mad at someone taking a photo of her while asleep, but this one was special because it spoke of the struggles and the joys of motherhood.
She spoke of not normally washing her hair and keeping it in a bun, and that her clothes are often stained with food and spits, her makeup is nowhere to be found, but this image her husband took would always serve as a reminder of how glamorous parenting really is.
Among the crying, the diapers, and all the mess, there are those tiny eyes that look at you as though you are the center of the world, and those gentle hugs that make you forget of all the troubles.
“I won’t mind the hectic evenings as much as holding and snuggling my infants to sleep. I can feel their little chests breathing in and out as their tiny fingers wrap around my own.”
“The ability to calm my children down with only a hug and a kiss on the forehead will bother me more than the weeping outbursts,” she wrote.
“I would like to reflect on this period in my life.
“I don’t want to forget this phase of parenting, no matter how difficult and stressful it might be.”
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