How an afternoon game show
introduced us in 1971
We are in the hunt for a tape of the show. In advance of our 50th wedding anniversary, please consider ways you can share this story widely so that, if any recording exists, we might find it. Thank you. –Cal and Nancy Stevens
“These are our friends Cal and Nancy. They met on The Dating Game!”
This is how introductions went for the first several years of our relationship. For this reason, we often downplayed the notoriety that came with this unusual story. It was almost embarrassing as it eclipsed other things about us. We wanted just to be Cal and Nancy, not Cal-and-Nancy-who-met-on-The-Dating-Game.
We met when show #198 was taped on September 14, 1971. Seven months later, on April 8, 1972, we were married. Over the years, the reticence to share the story receded, and now the whole tale is quite fun to tell. And with our fiftieth wedding anniversary on the horizon, the memory is all the sweeter.
TV-Radio Mirror 73:9, p. 24, Aug ’73
Oh, yeah. There was one time we were less reticent to tell the tale. At the urging of the DG folks, TV-Radio Mirror, a celebrity-gossip style magazine, published a version of our story in August of 1973. It seemed a bit sensational, and the writing was hokey, but ok. At least we turned down the offer to come on The Newlywed Game; by that time we’d had enough.
The best re-telling would be to have a tape of the show, but that has eluded us over several attempts in all the years since. Despite some very good connections with Sony Corp, the current owners of The Dating Game content, we continue to hear that they cannot find our episode. Several months of episodes, including ours, are simply not in Sony’s library.1
The story is fun to tell, however, even without a tape of episode 198. Read on.
Recruited
Chuck Barris Productions (also producer of The Newlywed Game, and later The Gong Show), ran The Dating Game daily every weekday afternoon and once weekly in prime time. Each episode consisted of two 15-minute games featuring a person (usually a female) asking questions of three contestants seated on the other side of a partition. Adding it up, the show needed 48 contestants per week.
In those years, among Southern Californians you were either recruited to be a contestant (even in High School) or knew someone who was. Nancy’s friend, a receptionist at a modeling studio, was recruited and was told to bring a friend. Nancy was the friend. I was working at a sporting goods store on Wilshire Blvd. in LA when one of the show’s producers came into the store. In addition to his shopping, he also invited the store staff to come try out for the show.
After mock show panel interviews, we were both scheduled for the show.2 They did not want contestants to inadvertently meet, so we were given separate studio entrances and arrival times. Despite these precautions, rumors persisted that the show was fake, and that contestants knew each other in advance. Not so. The show set-up was legit. Nancy and I did not meet until I rounded the partition at the end of our game.
The Taping
There was a live studio audience. Several days’ shows were taped at the same sitting. Audience members were strictly told not to shout out “pick Bachelor #2” or whatever, but simply to laugh and applaud.
The staff from the show, all sporting headsets and clipboards, worked to shuttle contestants to the wings. The three bachelors were positioned on stools placed on their side of the stage. I was “bachelor #2.” The stage was rotated away from audience view, but at the appropriate moment, after the host Jim Lange opened the show, the bachelors’ part of the stage would rotate back into view. “And here they are!” Lange would say in his radio-host voice, and he’d read the words from cue cards that introduced each bachelor.
During these introductions, Nancy was in a so-called “soundproof booth” unable to hear the bios of the guys. The show’s production staff had made some attempt to have bachelors whose application forms had shown similar interests to the bachelorette’s. All three guys, I included, claimed some interest in the outdoors and camping, for example. Also, having asked for Nancy’s preferences about things she likes in men, they managed to find guys with dark hair and moustaches. That worked out.3
Nancy was escorted from the booth to the wings and was introduced by Lange. She walked out to the Tijuana Brass music that was used as bumper music on this program. We three bachelors could not see this happening on the other side of the partition. After the introduction, she is invited to sit and begin her questions.
Today is The Dating Game, tomorrow is The Newlywed Game; What happens the day after tomorrow?
Nancy nylen, to bachelors #1 and #2, September 14, 1971
Those familiar with the game will recall that the (usually) female contestant posed a series of questions to the three bachelors hidden by the partition. Nancy brought her questions to the show, though the writers met with her in advance to change them up a bit. In later years, especially on the dating shows that evolved over ensuing decades, the questions were more daring, even salacious. But this was 1971. Nancy’s questions were more playful than provocative.
I still remember this one: “Today is The Dating Game, tomorrow is The Newlywed Game; what happens day after tomorrow?” To this, Bachelor #1 said Divorce Court, following an unfortunate logic based on afternoon TV shows from the time. The audience groaned. “Bachelor #2, same question” Nancy said. I feigned an old man’s voice and said something like “well, we’ll grow old together, go on Monte Hall’s Let’s Make a Deal, and win washing machines and trips to Acapulco!” followed by an old man’s wheezing laugh. This received a better audience reaction.
When the time for questions expired, Lange segued with a few words of coaching for Nancy. She was then to consider which Bachelor gets the date and reveal her choice when the show is back from commercial break.
The break over, Lange asked “Will it be bachelor #1, bachelor #2, or bachelor #3?” Nancy said, “Bachelor #2,” based, she said, on my answers, the humor, etc. And with those words both our lives charted a new course. The other two gents were briefly introduced and dismissed from the set with the promise of “consolation prizes.” Then the brass soundtrack resumed as Lange introduced me, the guy she picked. I walked around the partition, and we saw each other for the first time.
When Jim Lange announced our date, we were surprised. Quite often on the afternoon show, the prizes were modest: dinner for two at The Brown Derby restaurant, or some such. This date was bigger, better, further out than usual: Three days at a resort in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. “You and your chaperone will be the guests of Outdoor Resorts of Gatlinburg!” 4
At the break following, we were bid to sit backstage while the second 15-minutes of the show played out for another bachelorette and a panel of three prospective bachelors. Nancy and I talked. “I’m glad we met,” I remember saying. We spent some time going over the usual things two 21-year-olds will cover in a first meeting: Where we are from, what we are doing, where we hope to be, etc. We both remarked at how easy it was for us to talk with each other.
After coming back out to close the show with The Dating Game’s trademark dismissal, the couples from both games blowing a kiss to the crowd, we were ushered into a room where we signed the contract to receive the prize date. We had to say we would go or send a substitute if we chose not to go.5 Not an issue for me, I thought, there’s no way I’d bail on some time with this girl.
We were told the show would air September 29 and the date to Tennessee would be October 8-10. We signed. They directed us to leave by the same separate entrances by which we arrived. At the last minute before walking down different hallways we agreed to meet around front of the studio, at the steps facing Vine Street, and go from there to get some dinner together.
It seems we would not wait until October to have our first date.
Dating Before, During, and After the Date
When I approached the front side of the studio, I saw Nancy standing with her parents who had come to see the taping. It was a pleasant and brief first meeting. We then left to get something to eat at Lawry’s on La Cienega. By the time we went on The Dating Game’s actual prize date, we had already been dating a little over three weeks.
These weeks were filled with our frequent attempts at finding reasons to get together: A Dodger game, trips to Nancy’s and (roommate) Shirley’s place in Newport Beach, visits with her family in Bellflower, my brother’s home in San Pedro, and other places.
When the actual date to Tennessee arrived, we showed up per agreement to LAX, meeting our chaperone, Alan Welch, and boarding a plane first to Dallas, then on to Nashville. The nature of our relationship was noticed by Alan immediately. He remarked that most Dating Game couples are at best cool, awkward, and many times bored. Alan said chaperoning these prize dates was often a drag because there’s rarely much energy or interest between the prize-winners, resulting in a go-through-the-motions ambience.
On the leg of the trip from Dallas to Nashville, we learned that Glen Campbell was on board in first class. So, when we saw the marching band on the tarmac, we thought the ceremony was for the country singer. All that fuss was for us, we realized, as they held up “welcome Dating Game Couple!” signs. Local hosts Dan Gilbert and Lindy Boucher (of Outdoor Resorts, Inc.) drove us in a Winnebago from Nashville to Gatlinburg where we were set up in separate motor homes.
The visit was enjoyable, though most of it was to use our faces and the show’s name to create some PR and advertising copy for the resort. I imagine that this is the deal the show makes with local hosts for such dates; the resort gets some mention on network TV and the PR content (pics and narrative) in exchange for their underwriting the costs of the date.
Did we think we were used a little? Maybe, but it did not matter much to us, except that we had little time to ourselves. It was a nice time, certainly, with some prowling of shops in Gatlinburg, a visit to Clingman’s Dome, and such.
The blur of activity as our relationship deepened makes October-to-April blur. There was bouncing around between residences, meeting of new friends, promises of early shared plans for matrimony, continued schooling for us both, sorting out career choices, coming to love new family members, clarifying of our shared faith, and a strong hope for the future.
April 8, 1972, we were married by Chuck Smith at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, CA, in that church’s little chapel (Greenville and Sunflower). The Dating Game had asked to film scenes from the wedding (not the ceremony itself) which they used at a subsequent show (date unknown) when they had us back on to celebrate our story. Our wedding present from The Dating Game was a trip to Puerto Vallarta.6
After a few months living in Costa Mesa, we moved to a small apartment in Los Angeles where I worked for Big Five Sporting Goods main office while Nancy finished her degree. I returned to school a couple years later.
All the rest is another set of stories, and not for now. The sum of it, some 50 years later, is living in three states, having three careers, three children, and three grandchildren. It was travel and learning, struggles and grace, music, adventures, family, friends, and joys.
I still have my moustache and we both still like to camp. And Nancy and I are still dating.
Share this story with others to help us find a copy of show #198 from 1971. Please comment below if you have helpful information that might lead to our finding a recording of the episode.
Pictures at resort entrance ’71, re-posed in ’13 
Viewpoint above Gatlinburg, Alan, Lindy, Nancy, Cal 
Stylin’ in Gatlinburg 
Local Hosts Lindy, Dan, Chaperone Alan, Nancy 
Notes
1 We’ve been told that in those pre-VCR days, taping was done in the studio on large spools of wide magnetic tape. These were so expensive they often recorded over the less consequential shows. There are at least some shows that exist from that period, and can be found on YouTube, but most often only when a celebrity was on the show.
2 The original date given to me was to come do the show on an earlier day. I told them I had a trip planned at that time and could not do it. They called sometime later and offered me, and I accepted, the September 14, 1971, taping.
3 Bachelor #3 was a last-minute replacement. Whoever they assigned to the episode was a no-show, so the staff quickly found a Hollywood-area local who could come in to replace him. I do not recall whether he liked camping or had a moustache; maybe he did.
4 The Outdoor Resorts property that hosted us was once a part of an RV resort chain or franchise, and now is a membership type more locally owned affair. We contacted them on our cross-country camping trip in 2013 and re-posed some of the pictures we took in 1971. They retained some record of us, our visit there, and pictures from 1971 for a small piece of the history of their resort.
5 We learned at some point that the game shows were under scrutiny to operate honestly. That was the legacy of a show called The $64,000 Question which some years before had been found to be staging game outcomes and other shenanigans. Now these shows had to prove that whenever they gave a prize, they really gave a prize; and in the case of The Dating Game, that meant that if they say on air that they gave a prize they must give it, even if the original recipients are not partaking of it.
6 By their estimate, we were about the thirteenth couple to marry after having met on the show. We were asked to come back and appear briefly at the end of a show. At this point they showed clips they had filmed at our wedding and gave us the “second honeymoon” trip to Puerto Vallarta.
calvinstevens 