For 11 seasons, Alan Alda played Hawkeye Pierce, the wisecracking surgeon who held the 4077th together with jokes and a scalpel. Off camera, the M*A*S*H star has spent his life holding together something he calls his greatest work: his family.
Alda, now 90, has been married to his wife Arlene since March 15, 1957. The two met at a friend’s dinner party in 1956, when a rum cake fell on the kitchen floor and they were the only two guests willing to eat it. Nearly 70 years later, they have three daughters, a house full of grandchildren, and a love story that still gets told at every family dinner.
Alan Alda’s Daughters Grew Up Far From Hollywood
When M*A*S*H took off in 1972, Alda made a choice that surprised a lot of people. He kept his wife and girls at home in Leonia, New Jersey, and flew back and forth from Los Angeles every weekend for the show’s entire run. He told Closer Weekly he did not want their lives “controlled by the job contract.”
That choice shaped the women his daughters became. Eve Alda, the oldest, was born in December 1958 and chose a quiet life. She studied psychology at Connecticut College and went on to the Simmons School of Social Work in Boston, building a career helping others. When her father went public with his Parkinson’s diagnosis in 2018, Eve was one of his loudest cheerleaders. “I think he’s working more and harder now than he ever has,” she wrote at the time.
Elizabeth Alda, born in 1960, got a taste of her dad’s world first. She appeared alongside him in The Four Seasons in 1981 and later in Night of the Creeps. Then she changed course. Elizabeth became a special education teacher and spent her career working with deaf students, helping bridge the gap between the deaf and hearing communities.
One Daughter Stayed Behind The Camera
Beatrice Alda, the youngest, also made her film debut in The Four Seasons, which her father wrote and directed. Unlike her sisters, she stayed in the business. She moved behind the camera as a director and producer, and in 2008 she co-directed Out Late, a documentary about people who came out later in life.
Alda has never been shy about how proud he is. He has said all three of his daughters “have advanced degrees and I’m very proud of them.” The next generation is close by, too. When Alda turned 90 in January, his grandson, filmmaker Jake Alda Coffey, shared photos of the low-key celebration. Fittingly, the night ended with a rum cake.
These days, Alda still records his podcast and still jokes about his Parkinson’s, which he told CBS Sunday Morning is “just a hobby.” His wife helps him with his shirt buttons when his hands won’t cooperate. After 69 years, the girl who ate the rum cake off the floor is still right beside him, and so are the three daughters they raised. You can read more about Alan Alda’s 90th birthday celebration here.