How Talk Show Host Dick Cavett Found Love Again After The Death Of His First Wife

Dick Cavett, the two-time Emmy-winning talk show host, was married to Carrie Nye for a significant part of his life. The couple met at Yale Drama School in the mid-1950s and got married in 1964, before Cavett became a comedian and TV host and Nye became an Emmy- and Tony-nominated actor. Although they kept their relationship mostly private, they supported each other. "He sees the plays I'm in sometime before they close, rarely on opening nights," Nye told The New York Times in 1972. In that same interview, she described their opposites-attract relationship, calling it "happy and amusing" nonetheless.

Unfortunately, in 2006, their relationship was cut short when Nye died after being diagnosed with lung cancer. Cavett told the Los Angeles Times for Nye's obituary that she was "devoted and professional and disciplined in her art," and agreed with others who said her humor was "wickedly witty." 

Four years later, Cavett revealed to Venice Magazine (via The Hollywood Interview) that he had married again. This time, he married a regular person outside the entertainment industry, Martha Rogers. Rogers has a PhD and works as an author, an adjunct professor at Duke University, and a co-founder of a company that advises companies on improving their customer experience.

In 2011, Dick Cavett shared his love story with Martha Rogers in an interview with the Toledo Blade, and it sounds like a perfect Hallmark movie. The couple met roughly 30 years before the time of the interview, when Rogers was trying to find the owners of two lost schnauzer dogs in New Orleans. Cavett said he happened upon her while walking through the city at the time, and for a few hours, helped her to get them back to the right place. After he left New Orleans, they kept in touch through letters for a few years.

"When my wife died [in 2006], I got a note from Martha and that resumed it," Cavett said. "I must have dropped her a note." They eventually met for dinner one night, and the rest is history. Cavett dedicated his memoir, "Talk Show," to Martha, which came out the same year they got married. As of writing, the couple are still together, and the former talk show host lives a lavish life with Rogers in a mansion near Ridgefield, Connecticut.