THE HONEYMOONERS' JOYCE RANDOLPH: I've Had a WONDERFUL LIFE
Closer US|February 20, 2023
THE LAST SURVIVING CAST MEMBER OF THE ICONIC SITCOM LOOKS BACK AT HER TIME AS AN ACTRESS, WIFE AND MOTHER
Lisa Chambers
THE HONEYMOONERS' JOYCE RANDOLPH: I've Had a WONDERFUL LIFE

The same year that the classic sitcom The Honeymooners premiered, Joyce Randolph, who played Trixie Norton, got married in real life. Creator and star Jackie Gleason's reaction was worthy of his character, gruff bus driver Ralph Kramden. "When my parents got married, Gleason's card said, 'Congratulations. No babies!" recalls Joyce's son, Randy Richard Charles, to Closer. "So they waited until the show was over and then they got pregnant."

Joyce and her husband, Richard Lincoln Charles, a marketing executive, didn't have to wait long to start a family. The Honeymooners stopped making new episodes just a year later, in 1956, but it has lived on in reruns and in the hearts of its fans for decades. Joyce, now 98, is the last living co-star, and while The Honeymooners was only a small part of her long life, it looms large in her memory. "It was all wonderful," she tells Closer. "Just being there, knowing we were popular. That was good!"

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