‘Happy Days’ Alum Anson Williams’ on Marriage to 3rd Wife Sharon: ‘There’s No Age Limit on Love’
In 2020, Anson Williams spontaneously texted his former real estate agent and asked if she wanted to meet him for lunch. Although he did not have moving, or selling his longtime home, on his mind, lunch went on for three hours. “We have not been apart from that day,” says the Happy Days alum-turned-TV director
Last May, Anson and Sharon MaHarry, both 73, wed in the backyard of the Ojai, California home she had sold him 13 years earlier. “It’s such a joy when you find someone who sees inside you and loves you so much,” Anson gushes to Closer. “Sharon is just amazing.
The pair entered each other’s lives at exactly the right time. In 2019, Anson and Jackie Gerken, with whom he shares three daughters, filed for divorce for a second and final time after 30 years together. (The actor also has a child from his first marriage to actress Lorrie Mahaffey, who played his girlfriend on six episodes of Happy Days.) Anson called himself a “broken guy” after the breakup of his union with Jackie. “I think I was a hermit up here, just kind of numb,” he says.
Sharon, meanwhile, was experiencing her own dark period. She had lost her husband of 35 years after a long illness and was learning to walk again after a serious back injury when Anson reentered her life. “The first few months of the relationship [with Anson] was healing,” says Sharon, who sought the blessing of her adult daughter before she started dating again. “That absolutely freed me to take advantage of this, whatever it was,” she says. “It was like a gift from God that I met him.”
Anson also feels like he’s been blessed to find love again. “There’s no age limit on being loved,” he says. “There’s no age limit on living life fully.”
There was also a bit of serendipity at play that allowed Anson and Sharon to even have a future together. “Sharon is alive because we met,” confides Anson. In 2022, Anson, a colon cancer survivor, underwent a surgical procedure after a suspect cancer screening. He was introduced to a doctor who performs corrections on patients with atrial fibrillation — a condition Sharon suffered from. At Anson’s suggestion, Sharon underwent AFib surgery — and received a shock. “They went in to do this simple procedure on her and saw a nonmalignant tumor attached to her aortic valve,” Anson explains. Sharon underwent open-heart surgery to remove the tumor that was likely to have grown and become a threat to her life in the future.
Anson, who was also given a clean bill of health, feels grateful that they are both well today. “That tumor would have eventually attached to her heart and killed her,” he says. “If we hadn’t met and fallen in love, there was no way in a million years that she would have known about it until it was too late.”
For Anson, love and life have never been sweeter. “We have such a powerful connection,” he says of his new bride. “We are in a world today where there are all these tragedies and so much negativity, so it’s really wonderful to find so much joy.”
