"He's IT," says Joanna Kerns of Marc Francis Appleton, the architect she's been dating since last February. "I've never been happier."
STAR/January 14, 1992
Joanna Kerns went to great pains to hide the identity of the man in her life, but after almost a year building a relationship, the Growing Pains star says California architect Marc Francis Appleton makes her happier than she's ever been.
Joanna, 37, who plays happy-go-lucky Maggie Seaver on ABC's hit series, had announced months ago: "At long last, I'm in love."
But she kept Mr. Wonderful's identity a secret-saying she was afraid of jinxing the romance.
Now Joanna, who recently produced and starred in ABC's The Nightman, has stopped hiding Marc. An eyewitness, who saw the happy couple at the Los Angeles premiere of JFK says: "They were holding hands and smiling. You could tell they really care for each other."
Another source adds: "Marc often visits Joanna on the set of Growing Pains. A few times, Joanna has gone off to her trailer for a private moment with him and she comes back to the set with a smile on her face and in a great mood."
Joanna confided to a friend: "I've never been happier. He's IT! This sounds corny, but he treats me so wonderfully, with so much respect, that I feel like a woman-a happy, satisfied woman-for the first time in my life."
Joanna met Marc, who is one of the owners of an architectural firm in Venice, Calif., through a mutual friend at a dinner party last February.
"I walked into a room-and there he was," she says.
After finding out the blond-haired, hazel eyed hunk was an architect, she called him up the very next morning with a phony story about wanting to build an extension on her house.
"I had nothing to lose," she says of her aggressive approach. "Men look at me with my career, my child and my high visibility-it can be intimidating to them."
Marc took the bait and soon they were dating. "I think he knew I didn't have any plans for a guest house," she laughs now.
Marc, whose divorce from ex-wife Mary Appleton became final just two days before Christmas, has two children, Katherine, 13, and David, 7, while Joanna has a daughter, Ashley, 12, from her first marriage, to director Richard Kerns.
