Why Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz's Daughter Called Their Divorce 'Fantastic'

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's love story is (almost) straight out of a fairytale. They met on the set of the 1940 film "Too Many Girls" and married the same year. The rest is literally television history. The couple was married for about 11 years, and they costarred as married couple Lucy and Ricky Ricardo in the groundbreaking sitcom "I Love Lucy" from 1951 to 1957. They went on to star together on 13 hour-long episodes of a show that became known as "The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour" from 1957 to 1960. Sadly, while their respective legacies in Hollywood will last forever, their marriage did not. They divorced the same year their second show stopped airing. 

Arnaz and Ball had two children together, Lucie Désirée Arnaz, born on July 17, 1951, and Desiderio "Desi" Alberto Arnaz Jr., born on January 19, 1953, so they remained connected for the rest of their lives. In 2019, Lucie told Closer Weekly that divorce was beneficial to her parents' relationship. She explained that her parents fought often during their marriage, and she said Ball came close to filing for divorce in 1944, well before "I Love Lucy" became a cultural phenomenon. 

Arnaz Sr. and Ball divorced in 1960. Lucie recalled, "They had a very successful divorce. It was fantastic." She explained that the exes stayed friends and never spoke badly about each other to her or her brother. "It was a fantastic romance that even got more passionate and more friendly after they were not married to each other anymore, so there," she joked. 

After they divorced each other, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz found love with other partners. Ball went on to marry comedian Gary Morton in 1961, and Desi married Edith Eyre Hirsch in 1963. But they still cared about each other. While promoting the 2022 documentary "Lucy and Desi," Lucie Arnaz recalled calling her mother in 1986 while she was her father's caregiver amid his lung cancer diagnosis to tell her that she thought her father was going to die soon. 

Days before Desi Arnaz died on December 2, 1986, Lucie was caring for her father when she witnessed her parents' final conversation. "I could hear her say, 'I love you.' She said it five times in a row. And he was nodding and saying, 'I love you too, honey,'" Lucie told People. "None of us realized it at the time, but the day they last spoke was Nov. 30, their wedding anniversary." Ball died about three years later on April 26, 1989, after having two cardiac events. "They gave the country this wonderful creation, but they never got what they wanted — to stay together," their daughter told People. "[But] they loved each other until the end."