America’s beloved 70s TV mom who had a secret romance with her on-screen husband was spotted in LA… can you guess who?

She was once celebrated as rural America’s mom, managing a household and raising a gaggle of seven kids in a beloved 1970s sitcom. 

Her first name was meant she was often mistaken for a male, which resulted in her being billed as ‘Miss’ early in her career.  

The actress grabbed three Emmy awards as Lead Actress in a Drama after being nominated six times for her warm and charismatic performance.

Later in her career, she appeared in iconic soap operas including All My Children, One Life to Live, General Hospital and The Young and the Restless.

She also revealed exclusively to DailyMail.com that she had a secret romance with her on-screen husband. 

Can you guess who she is?

It’s Michael Learned! 

Now 85 years old, Learned was spotted on a rare outing in Los Angeles with her fourth husband, John Doherty, who she married in 1991.

The actress got out of her gray sedan carrying a valet ticket and canned seltzer.

Learned smiled as she talked to a doorman while another valet approached the car to move it to another location. 

She sported a comfy-casual look with a pair of gray joggers, a navy blue speckled shirt, a pair of blue slide-on sneakers, a light gray canvas coat, a stylish black purse with gold hardware and matching dainty gold jewelry.

Her husband Doherty wore glasses with black frames, a green cardigan and a khaki brown shirt.

Learned has achieved her happily ever after with husband Doherty, a California-based lawyer.

But she had to strike out three times to achieve it. 

She first tied the knot with Canadian-American actor Peter Donat – who passed away in 2018 – when she was only 17 years old and he was 28. 

Together they appeared in various roles at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California, and shared three sons. But their marriage dissolved after 16 years.

Her second marriage to Glenn Chadwick, a stagehand, in 1974 only lasted two years before she actor and screenwriter William Parker becme husband number 3. They  divorced in 1989.

But it was her first split from Donat that would define her acting career. 

Since the pair had acted together at the San Francisco theater, Learned told the Archive of American Television that she had a feeling she wouldn’t be welcomed back after her divorce. 

Making the trip down to Los Angeles in search of work with only a few items to her name and a severe alcohol addiction, she was told about an opportunity to be in the television drama, The Waltons – a show that features an Appalachian family navigating the Great Depression.  

Initially, she had no interest in the show, wanting to stay on stage instead. She even showed up to the screen test hungover. 

But as soon as the scene began with her future castmates, Richard Thomas and Ralph Waite, she quickly found her rhythm and let her acting chops take over. 

Convinced she hadn’t gotten the part, Learned said she put the audition in the back of her mind. But four days later she got the call – she was going to be the mother of America. 

And Learned’s screen presence as the matriarch earned her three Emmys as Lead Actress in a Drama after being nominated six times.

Learned told Dailymail.com, on the fifth anniversary of her on-screen husband Ralph Waite’s death, that the duo ‘were in love’ off-screen and even went on a date. 

But the pragmatic pair decided during their first intimate meeting that they probably shouldn’t pursue a romance as it could ruin the famous show and ‘get messy’.

Instead, Learned said their instant chemistry turned into a lifelong friendship and Waite became her ‘spiritual husband.’

She also revealed how Waite ‘saved her life’ as her heavy drinking – mainly bourbon and wine – ran out of control during the early years of the CBS series.

The actress stayed on the show for seven seasons, reappearing for season eight briefly under the guise of her character developing tuberculosis and entering a sanatorium in Arizona.

But she returned for four out of the six sequel movies after the show ended. 

During the 80s, she appeared in the films Touched by Love, Power and Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. 

She kept up with her fledging television career and was nominated for two Emmys, winning one, for her role as Nurse Mary Benjamin in the critically acclaimed drama series Nurse, which ran from 1981 to 1982.

As the decades passed, the actress transitioned to soaps and appeared in All My Children and One Life to Live as Judge Turner, General Hospital as Shirley Smith and The Young and the Restless as matriarch Katherine Chancellor.

Recently, Learned returned to television in a streaming service format to star as the infamous serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s grandmother in the Netflix series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.

Learned was born in Washington D.C. and raised on a farm in Connecticut for the first ten years of her life. She was the eldest of six sisters.

She comes from a family of diplomats as her father Bruce worked for the State Department and her maternal grandfather worked in embassies.