50 years ago tonight, 52M+ TV viewers tuned into a wedding

[TMC]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marcber...o-on-this-day/

50 years ago tonight, on Monday, October 28, 1974 at 9 pm EST, more than 52 million TV viewers stayed home and tuned into CBS. They watched the one hour special of 'Rhoda', in which everyone's favorite single 34 year old friend got married to 'Joe', a handsome divorced father of a ten year old son. It was more than half of television viewers in America (the episode was the most-watched television show for the 1974-75 season, and held the title for the next three years, until the record was broken by ABC's "Roots"). Critics called it a “television phenomenon”. The prior record holder was the birth of Little Ricky on 'I Love Lucy' in January, 1951 with 44 million viewers.

The series spun off from 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' on September 9, 1974. Mary's friend Rhoda (Emmy winner Valerie Harper) left Minneapolis to vacation in NYC and reunite with her parents and younger sister. While staying with her sister Brenda (Julie Kavner) in Manhattan, Rhoda meets Joe (David Groh) and falls in love, something she was unable to do back in Minneapolis. Harper won her fourth Emmy, this time for 'Best Lead Actress in a Comedy Series' for this episode.

Right after the episode concluded, Howard Cosell welcomed his Monday Night Football audience back to the game. During the Atlanta-Pittsburgh game he quipped that he had not been invited to the wedding.

Groh died in 2012 from kidney failure. Harper died in 2019 from cancer. Kavner, 72, is the only original cast member of the episode still alive (and has a successful career as a voice-over character on 'The Simpsons' since 1989).

[Schmo]

And then the higher-ups decided the series would not be funny having Rhoda as a married woman, so they screwed things up.