#muppet performer romances are WILD this isn't even the craziest one

[madamegemknight]

Tell me funfact ?

ehehehe fun fact time >:) I have been Obsessed with this story since I first heard it so today I will tell you about how Caroll Spinney (the man who puppeteered Big Bird and Oscar on Sesame Street until 2018) met his wife Debra, a story which is simultaneously the cutest and dumbest story I have ever heard.

It's a long one so under the cut it goes!

In the late 70s, Caroll saw a woman with a pixie haircut working at her desk at the Children's Television Workshop (the group that makes Sesame Street and that is now known as the Sesame Workshop), and was immediately taken with her. Right then and there, he decided to screw up his courage and ask her on a dinner date, which she politely refused - while she appreciated the gesture, she was already married and expected at home to cook dinner for her husband. When recalling the event in his autobiography, The Wisdom of Big Bird, Caroll says that he was upset but not surprised; a woman as beautiful as her had to have already been taken.

Several months later at the CTW's Christmas party, Caroll ran into a woman with a "Dutch Boy" haircut (essentially another name for a pageboy haircut, reference picture below). Once again, he was taken, and spent the night chatting with her and eventually asking if she wanted to sit with him when they started serving dinner - and once again, the woman politely refused, explaining that she couldn't stay at the party due to husband expecting her at home. Caroll was once again respectful, but internally lamented the fact that all the woman he was interested in were apparently married.

Then, a few months after the Christmas party, Caroll was approached by a long-haired woman while recording a Sesame Street album. The two of them immediately hit it off, and while Caroll didn't remember having ever met the woman, he felt as if she knew him. They talked for a while about their personal lives, with the woman (who's name was Debra) mentioning at one point that she'd recently ended her marriage, and while Caroll had to go on tour for Sesame Street and was thus unable to see her for three months, the two met back up after he got back and very quickly fell in love.

AND WHEN I SAY QUICKLY I MEAN "CAROLL PROPOSED 13 DAYS AFTER THEIR FIRST DATE AND SHE IMMEDIATELY SAID YES" QUICKLY.

(years later in the aforementioned Wisdom of Big Bird autobiography, Caroll would say that on the day he proposed he was "more in love than [he'd] ever been in his life" and that there was never a moment he regretted proposing so soon, claiming that he "could have proposed the first night - almost two weeks was too long a wait." if you'll forgive my inner sappy hopeless romantic, WAUGHHH)

Debra and Caroll were together until Caroll passed away in December of 2019, with one of his last on-screen appearances being a cameo in Sesame Street's 50th anniversary celebration with his wife by his side.

The two cared for each other deeply and were nigh-inseparable - a performance done during Caroll's retirement party titled "Great Moments in Spinney History," which walked through the entirety of Caroll's career and highlighted such notable events as the first time he met Jim Henson, even went so far as to make a Debra Muppet (pictured below hugging the man playing Caroll in the performance, Alan Muraoka) to emphasize the impact she'd had on his life. It had taken a while for Caroll to find love, but if he hadn't been rejected by the two women he'd previously met at the CTW, he never would have met Debra, a woman with whom he'd form a relationship filled to the brim with love.

OR AT LEAST THAT'S WHAT HE THOUGHT.

On a trip to Switzerland that Debra had won on a game show a few months after his proposal, she toasted him and thanked him for never giving up on her. Confused by the phrasing of the toast, he asked her what she meant, at which point she stated that if he'd stopped talking to her after their first meeting back when she was still married, they never would have gotten together.

Yes, in a twist you might have seen coming a mile away, DEBRA HAD BEEN ALL THREE WOMEN CAROLL HAD MET AT THE CTW, AND WHAT HE'D MISTAKEN FOR THREE WOMAN WITH DIFFERENT HAIRCUTS HAD BEEN ONE WOMAN WHO'S HAIR HAD GRADUALLY GROWN OUT BECAUSE THAT'S HOW THE PASSAGE OF TIME WORKS. While he'd thought that he had fallen for three separate women, he'd actually fallen for the same woman - his future wife - three times over, a story that's incredibly sweet but also incredibly, incredibly dumb. truly the cringefail romance rep we deserved <3

(pictured above: a man who won a lifetime achievement award but somehow DIDN'T REALIZE THAT HAIR GROWS)