Speaking to PEOPLE, former Star Trek star and current Hallmark holiday film actor Jonathan Frakes described his nearly four decades of marriage to fellow entertainment icon Genie Francis, with whom he worked on the miniseries “North and South” in 1985.
Particularly, Frakes, who famously played Commander William Riker in the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, commented on how he met his wife and how they began their relationship, which turned into a 38-years-long marriage.
Beginning, Frakes told PEOPLE that they met on a soap opera and that Francis, a decade younger than he, seemed to young for him at first. He said, “We’ve been together for 38 years. I met my wife, the wonderful Genie Francis, on a show called Bare Essence, which was the last of the nighttime soaps – and she was too young for me!”
Continuing, he noted that it was on the Civil War drama North and South that they started dating, saying, “The dailies were so good that they said, ‘Why don’t we make it, from six hours, make it 12 hours?’ or whatever it was. So we were on location in Charleston and Natchez, and we fell in love – and now, somehow, she wasn’t too young for me. So we have been together ever since our first date on North and South when we took a break for Memorial Day and went to New Orleans 38 years ago.”
He also said that Francis’ career was looking a good bit brighter than his at the time, joking that that made her interest in him inexplicable: “Somehow, she took a chance on me, because I was like, number 37 on the call sheet on North and South and she was up there with Patrick Swayze and Lesley-Anne Down. So why she would go out with me is a mystery!”
But go out with him she did and married they got, and now they have a daughter who is also an actor. Frakes commented that it will be hard for her to be as fortunate in her relationships as they were in theirs, given how well their marriage has gone.
He said, “She has this idea, because she was raised with the two of us, that this is how [things work]. And we both know that that’s not the case, right? So it’s hard, I would think, to come into a family where two people have been as fortunate as Genie and I have been.”
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Frakes then spoke about the Hallmark Channel, for which he appeared in a movie coming out this Christmas season. He said, “My wife has done a number of these movies. This brand is quite amazing, and I’m always looking for another outlet. I’ve been blessed with this Star Trek thing for 36 years, so to be part of a new franchise is kind of a treat for me. And I had been very nervous about acting until I did the third season on Picard. And then they asked me to do this, and I thought, ‘Oh, this will be fun for me, plus the story is great.’”
Featured image credit: By Super Festivals from Ft. Lauderdale, USA – A300384, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=137039535