Valerie Harper & Mary Tyler Moore: Inside Their SPECIAL FRIENDSHIP

THEIR RELATIONSHIP SURVIVED NEARLY 50 YEARS AND MANY UPS AND DOWNS

- LOUISE A. BARILE

Three times a week, Mary Tyler Moore brought her dance instructor to the set of her eponymous TV series to lead a lunchtime workout for anyone who wanted to join in. Her most constant companion at these classes was Valerie Harper, who shared a dance background with the show's star. "Mary was so generous and sweet," recalled Valerie to Closer. "She really welcomed me."

They co-starred on just the first four seasons of the groundbreaking Mary Tyler Moore Show, but it. was enough to create a bond that would endure for decades and sustain them both through good times and bad. "I don't think they ever had a fight," says an insider. "Mary always wanted the best for everyone, and Valerie never forgot how Mary helped her break out as a star."

Like the characters they played, Mary and Valerie were opposites in many ways. "Mary was more reserved and quieter, and Val was kind of loud, but they got along wonderfully," says Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, author of Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted.

California-reared Mary came from an upper-class family that hid its secrets. "I grew up in a very conservative household, and I went to a private girls school, and you behaved in a certain way," recalled Mary, who believed that repressed emotions led to her mother's alcoholism and, later, her own. The actress quit drinking in 1984.