Maureen McCormick, best known for her role as Marcia Brady on The Brady Bunch, celebrated her 40th wedding anniversary this year.
The actress and her husband, Michael Cummings, say the secret to a lasting marriage in Hollywood is surprisingly simple.
“You’ve got to have a sense of humor about things,” Cummings told People at The John Ritter Foundation’s Evening from the Heart Gala in Los Angeles. “You can’t take things too seriously. You’ve got to let things go and just love the one you’re with. It’s a lifetime deal.”
McCormick added that celebrating their differences has been key. The couple realized “right away” that they wanted to build a life together. Their strong bond was also helped by the fact that Cummings wasn’t starstruck by McCormick’s TV fame when they first met.
Maureen McCormick famously starred as Marcia Brady on The Brady Bunch.
“I didn’t know who she was, but I liked what I saw,” her husband, Michael Cummings, said. “I saw those eyes and just fell in love.”
McCormick admitted that his lack of familiarity with her acting career was “very refreshing.”
“He had no preconceived ideas about who I was,” the former child star recalled. “It was really wonderful.”
“Ever since I was little, I wanted to get married and find somebody,” McCormick, 69, added. “It’s just the craziest thing, but I looked at his eyes—we were at a concert—and I just felt like he was the one.”
Maureen McCormick and Michael Cummings attended the Evening From The Heart Gala in Hollywood on September 12, 2025.
The couple began dating in the 1980s, married in 1985, and welcomed their daughter, Natalie Michelle Cummings, in 1989. Over the years, they have consistently prioritized family over fame.
“Honestly, we haven’t stopped celebrating [our anniversary], because I think it’s taken a lot of work to be [in] this place in our relationship,” McCormick said. “It’s better than ever. We feel very grateful and thankful to have found each other.”
McCormick starred as Marcia Brady on The Brady Bunch for five seasons from 1969 to 1974 and later reprised the role in various spinoff specials and films. She also appeared on shows like The Love Boat and Fantasy Island and competed on Dancing with the Stars in 2016.
In February, McCormick called Cummings her “forever Valentine” in a heartfelt Instagram post. In 2024, she reflected on being sober for more than 40 years, saying she wouldn’t have it any other way.
McCormick said that her husband’s lack of knowledge about her acting career was “very refreshing.” At the time, she told Us Weekly that she felt “incredibly lucky” to have found sobriety after struggling with drug addiction following the end of The Brady Bunch.
“It’s not easy in the beginning at all, but it gets better every day,” she said. McCormick described sobriety as “everything to me” and credited her husband, along with her parents, family, and close friends, for helping her get clean.
“I’m so happy to be sober and to be really clear and comfortable in my skin,” she said. “I feel very blessed to have him in my life.”
Her journey to sobriety was not without challenges. McCormick battled a cocaine addiction for five years, a struggle she detailed in her 2008 memoir, Here’s the Story. “I had played Marcia Brady for five years. But I wasn’t her in any way, shape or form. She was perfect. I was anything but that,” she wrote, as quoted by The Telegraph.
McCormick said she felt “incredibly lucky” to have found sobriety after struggling with drug addiction following the end of The Brady Bunch.
“I sought refuge in seemingly glamorous cocaine dens above Hollywood,” she admitted. “I thought I would find answers there, while, in reality, I was simply running farther from myself. From there, I spiraled downward on a path of self-destruction that cost me my career and very nearly my life.”
She detailed the depth of her struggles in her memoir, writing, “Over the years I battled drug addiction and bulimia. I was treated in a psych ward, went in and out of rehab, and looked to God for answers … If there was coke, I had to stay up and do every last flake, even if it meant going without sleep for days. Nothing else mattered.”
In 2018, McCormick told Us Weekly that her parents “almost turned me in to the cops,” after years of trying to intervene. “I was pretty sneaky, and I could hide very, very well. But then I started messing up on jobs and so many things, so I’m sure everyone in the industry at the time knew that I was flaking out.”
It was Cummings who gave her a wake-up call after her last relapse. “He came to me and said, ‘If you ever do this drug again, I’m gone, I’m leaving,’” McCormick recalled. “It woke me up. It was like the coldest shower you could ever take. There’s just no way I’m gonna lose somebody that I love.”
