Family Ties Star Michael Gross Shares Sweet Tribute To TV Wife & Birthday Twin Meredith Baxter

It's not uncommon for TV families to evolve into permanent fixtures in actors' lives — even decades after a series ends. Whether you played life-long "Friends," lovers, or siblings across several seasons of television, it would make sense that many on-screen pairings hit it off in real life.

That's certainly true for the cast of the hit '80s sitcom "Family Ties," in more ways than one. Michael J. Fox met his wife, Tracy Pollan, on the set of the series, tying the knot in 1988 and having their own four kids. As for Fox's on-screen parents, Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter, their connection is arguably just as serendipitous. Playing a couple of former '60s hippies raising Republican kids on the show, it was important to put up a united front on screen. Their natural chemistry could come from the fact that the pair share the same birthday, and Gross took to Instagram on June 21, 2026, to celebrate their mutual birthday with a sweet message.

Posting a portrait of the duo where Gross is giving his on-screen wife a kiss on the cheek, the caption described how they were born 79 years ago on opposite sides of the country. As fate would have it, "Thirty-five years later, the two of them met and played husband and wife on @nbc's FamilyTies." Even their youngest on-screen daughter, Tina Yothers (a former sitcom star who stays mostly out of the spotlight) described how the Keaton family still "love each other to this day" in a 2022 interview with Daily Blast Live, showcasing how even fictional families can last forever.

While Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter's characters on "Family Ties" were a match made in the stars, there wasn't anything romantic about the actors' relationship with each other. Despite playing on-air spouses for seven years, and even starring as parents again in the 2011 Hallmark film "Naughty or Nice," their chemistry has always been purely platonic. Baxter shared in a 2018 joint interview with Call Me Adam (for another one of their collaborations) how, "Our friendship was a profoundly deep and meaningful relationship to me when we worked together on 'Family Ties.' He was my best friend during that time."

The pair have had very different trajectories when it comes to their personal love lives. Gross met his wife, casting director Elza Bergeron, during the "Family Ties" casting process — with the pair wedding not long after in 1984. In the interview with Call Me Adam, Gross described his biggest victory as, "Keeping my marriage together for almost 35 years. It was/is my first marriage. I married late because I don't think I was quite equipped for it earlier in life. But after all that muddle and confusion, I finally settled down. I definitely chose the right person."

Baxter, on the other hand, was married three times before meeting her wife, Nancy Locke. The actor came out on the "Today" show in 2009, marrying Locke in an intimate ceremony in 2013 after seven years of dating. While their paths to finding love may have been very different, they ultimately found themselves exactly where they needed to be.