Steenburgen took Danson to the White House before they got married in 1995.

Bill Clinton grilled Ted Danson about his intentions when he started dating Mary Steenburgen

Steenburgen took Danson to the White House before they got married in 1995.

By Derek Lawrence

Derek Lawrence

Derek Lawrence is a former associate editor at **. He left EW in 2022.

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April 20, 2026 5:58 p.m. ET

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Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen; Bill Clinton. Credit:

Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic; Craig Barritt/Getty

- Mary Steenburgen took Ted Danson to the White House shortly after they started dating.

- President Bill Clinton grilled Danson about his intentions.

- Clinton contends that it was an "effective" strategy.

Meeting the friends of your new girlfriend always comes with a bit of pressure, so imagine what it would be like if the president of the United States is the one grilling you about your intentions. Well, welcome to Ted Danson's reality.

The *Cheers* star hosted a conversation with Bill and Hillary Clinton over the weekend at Philadelphia's History Talks, and Danson used this as an opportunity to ask former President Clinton about his role in Danson and wife Mary Steenburgen's relationship.

“One of the first things she did was take me to meet her dear friends in the White House," Danson said of Steenburgen, who he met on the set of 1994's *Pontiac Moon*. "Bill — Mr. President — took me around the corner, and there were three Secret Service agents behind him, all of them looking at me. The president asked me what my intentions were.”

Mary Steenburgen and Ted Danson on 'A Man on the Inside'.

Colleen E. Hayes/Netflix

Danson then asked his first question of the panel: "Mr. President, do you think that was fair?”

Clinton fired back, “No, but it was effective... I didn't think I had to be fair when it came to Mary. I wanted her to be happy. And I thought, as it turned out, you'd be the best thing that ever happened to her."

Danson had already been married two times before Steenburgen, and he was coming off of his highly publicized relationship with Whoopi Goldberg. And Steenburgen was just a few years removed from her divorce from actor Malcolm McDowell.

Mary Steenburgen assumed future husband Ted Danson was 'slick' like his 'Cheers' character

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The two married in 1995, but Steenburgen previously revealed that she initially worried that Danson would be too similar to his iconic ladies man character from* Cheers*. "I don't know how I was this stupid, but I thought that you were a little bit like Sam Malone," she told Danson on his podcast. "But my joke is that slick guys don't say 'gosharoonie' after making love."

Danson and Steenburgen's relationship has made its way onto television a few times. They played fictional versions of themselves on *Curb Your Enthusiasm*, on which they got divorced and Danson started dating Larry David's wife Cheryl (Cheryl Hines). More recently, Steenburgen joined the cast of Netflix's *A Man on the Inside* as Danson's love interest.

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