He Met Her at a Barbecue… and Married Her 14 Days Later. What Happened Next Shocked Everyone.
When Hollywood legend James Garner locked eyes with Lois Clarke at a friend’s backyard barbecue in 1956, time practically stopped. He didn’t know her name, her story, or her past — but he knew. Two weeks later, they were standing in a Beverly Hills courthouse saying “I do.” Everyone said it was crazy… until decades proved otherwise.
They couldn’t have been more different.
He was a quiet Oklahoma-born actor climbing his way up; she was a petite, outgoing free spirit. He stood 6’3″, she barely 4’8″. He was a Methodist, she was Jewish. She had already been married once. Friends warned him it would never last. But James didn’t listen — he’d already decided: she was it.
In his memoir years later, James wrote, “I fell in love for the first and last time on August 1, 1956… It was love at first sight. The thunderbolt.”
That night he ended up splashing around in the pool with the kids, completely captivated by her laugh. Within days, the two were inseparable — dinners, drives along Sunset, talking until sunrise. And on August 17, 1956, exactly 14 days after meeting, they married in a simple ceremony that stunned everyone around them.
Their differences turned out to be their greatest strength.
Where he was practical, she was imaginative. Where she dreamed, he delivered. Together they built a family — welcoming daughter Gigi and raising Lois’s first child, Kim, as his own. Through fame, gossip, and grueling film schedules, their bond only deepened. Even a brief three-month separation in the 1970s couldn’t break them. James admitted later: “It wasn’t us — it was me needing to get my head together.”
When James Garner passed away in 2014 at 86, Lois had stood by him for nearly 60 years — a lifetime of loyalty in an industry famous for short love stories. Their marriage became proof that love at first sight isn’t a fairy tale — it just takes two people brave enough to trust it.
