"Celebrating the birth of the best thing that ever happened to me!" wrote her husband.
Sandy Duncan is 77 years old now. The actress started to work in the entertainment industry when she was only 12, impressing audiences with her sprightly dance moves and angelic voice. Over the years, she moved to larger stages and took more daring roles.
Eventually, Sandy would become one of the most recognizable actresses of her time, landing roles in films like The Million Dollar Duck, Scooby-Doo, The Sandy Duncan Show, and The Muppets. As per CBS, her career reached its peak as she was in her role as the boy in the green tights in her stage rendition of Peter Pan.
Sandy was able to achieve all this with less than-optimal eyesight. In the process of making her name, obstacles were many. She was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The actress started getting debilitating headaches when she turned 25. After being misdiagnosed for a while she underwent brain surgery. As the doctors rooted around in her head, they discovered a large and benign tumor on her eye. Unfortunately, trying to remove it, they severed her optic nerve which made her completely blind in her left eye.
Sandy didn't let this obstacle get to her and continued to focus on her career and land bigger roles. At this time, she became the face of Peter Pan on stage, stirring joy in the audience with wild leaps and soaring songs. She did all of this with only one eye. As she discussed the effects of the surgery with CBS, "I have holes and scars all over the place... I had to wear a wig for almost a year."
By the 1980s, she had landed multiple award-winning films and shows. Although her marriage crumbled at the time, she met Don Correia and then tied the knot with him. The couple is happily married even today, 45 years after they first said their vows.
Recently, for her 77th birthday, her husband wrote a Facebook post, which read, "Celebrating the birth of the best thing that ever happened to me! Our 45th year together (2 years in sin, don't tell anyone). Where did the time go??"
The pair spoke of their life together and said it could not get better. As two professional dancers, they related to each other and understood each other. As per CBS, a reporter asked them, "What did it feel like to dance with each other?" to which Sandy replied, "You just knew you were never going to fall."
Soon, Sandy and Don had two boys together and now the actress is also a proud grandmom. She and Don gave birth to Michael Correia and Jeffrey Correia and both have kids of their own. As per Washington Post, Sandy continued to balance her personal life and work, as she once said, "I drop one of my children off at nursery school, and I'm home by 6:30 or 7. I have weekends off. It's not unreasonable. I don't want to miss all this."
But she slowed down her career to take care of her children and spend more time with them. Don posted a picture of the family on Facebook to celebrate Mothers' Day in 2021. The image showed the family smiling at the camera with their arms around each other. In the caption, Don wrote, "Happy mothers day to my beautiful wife ... I couldn't be more blessed!!"
Despite the obstacles in her life, Sandy told Closer Weekly, "I've been very blessed on many levels."
References:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/peter-pan-star-sandy-duncan/
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10159343402314642&set=a.10150921829914642
https://www.closerweekly.com/posts/sandy-duncan-career-166164/
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photo By Jemal Countess
