When 'Young Bride' Betty White Called Westchester Home

CHAPPAQUA, NY — There is more than one generation that grew up only knowing Betty White as the snowy-haired Golden Girl, but once upon a time in the Hudson Valley, game shows ruled the airwaves and the California girl suddenly found herself a "young bride" and a New Yorker.

It was White's marriage to fellow television star Allen Ludden in 1963 that brought the California native to the East Coast and eventually, the Hamlet of Chappaqua. Ludden confessed that he was able to take the girl out of California but never managed to take the California out of the girl — a graduate of Beverly Hills High School who would one day be officially named the Honorary Mayor of Hollywood.

In fact, the pair famously had a running schtick in which Ludden would espouse the virtues of New York, while White would melodramatically pine for the West Coast. Ludden was known to jest that there was no good conversation in California, noting that "they're all inarticulate," according to the book "The Life (and Wife) of Allen Ludden" by Adam Nedeff. With her famous comedic timing, White would inquire why, in that case, did her husband marry a Californian, setting her partner up for the 1960s-appropriate punch line, "Who wants an articulate wife?"

If it took White some time to fall in love with New York, the couple's Hudson Valley dream house in Chappaqua they shared with widower Ludden's children helped the Golden State girl assimilate to the Empire State. Despite careers that required gruelling hours in the city, the couple chose a quiet Hudson Valley farmhouse and remodeled the barn as their castle.

"When we first saw this house, surrounded by lilacs in bloom and fruit trees in flower, it was love at first sight for us all," White told the Yonkers Statesman in a March 14, 1964 interview at the family's then 100-year-old Chappaqua home.

"Neither of us has really ever lived in a city and it never occurred to us that we would," her husband added.

Betty White Ludden's time as a transplant from the glitz of 1960s Hollywood to a quaint upstate hamlet ended up being a good career move. Paradoxically, the move to the country only enhanced her fame — despite the Statesman's insistence that the "young bride" was determined not to let her career get in the way of her duties as a homemaker.

White often shared the stage with her husband on his wildly popular gameshow "Password." The couple even competed for ratings while hosting the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on dueling networks.

"My agent is happier about this marriage than anybody," she once quipped. "He's been wanting me to move here for years."