All My Children's Erica Kane certainly has quite a few shocking romance tales to tell, but it turns out her longtime portrayer, Susan Lucci, has a doozy, as well: the Emmy-winning actress recently revealed that she fell for her husband, Helmut Huber, during her own engagement party to another man!
Lucci and Huber sat down with Yahoo! Lifestyle to share their personal love story, and they laid some very interesting tidbits about their early days on the table. Many fans already know that Huber was Lucci's boss when she started waitressing at New York's Garden City Hotel when she was 18 years old. And they probably already know that despite an initial attraction to each other, the pair's age difference prevented them from pursuing any kind of romantic relationship. However, what many fans might not know, as Huber points out, is that before she realized how much she cared for Huber, "she got engaged to another fella."
It was at this point that fate stepped in: Lucci's parents threw their daughter an engagement party at the same Long Island hotel and came across Huber in the hallway. They invited him to join the celebratory dinner, not realizing that doing so prompted a life-changing decision.
"I was thinking at the time that he was much more attractive than I even knew and I shouldn't be feeling like that," Lucci recalls of what was going through her mind while she looked at Huber with her then-fiancé by her side. "[I remember thinking] 'Something is wrong with this picture'. But I didn't know what to do with it."
Huber, however, already knew that it was meant to be and turned to Lucci's mom to say, "She needs a man, not a boy."
Lucci ultimately decided to end her engagement, but she wasn't sure where her relationship with Huber would go -- despite his repeated declarations that he'd like to marry her.
"Sometimes I think there's a reason why I played Erica Kane, why they cast me in that role," the actress jokes in reference to the soap-like drama of her own romantic relationship at the time.
In the end, Lucci recalls, it was one small romantic gesture that convinced her that Huber was a man worth keeping.
"One night we were in the sun porch of my parents' home. Helmut realized that I was cold. He took his socks off and put his socks on me," Lucci shares, adding it was that moment when she realized, "This is somebody spectacular."
Lucci and Hubert were married just a couple of months later and have been together for 49 years, becoming parents to two children.
"To love somebody like that, that doesn't happen that often," Huber shares. "And if it does happen, it's the most wonderful thing in the world."
To watch Lucci and Huber's full love story, check out Yahoo!'s article here.
What do you think of Lucci and Huber's love story? Did you know the actress was engaged to another man when she first fell in love with her longtime husband? We want to hear from you -- so drop your comments in the Comments section below, tweet about it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, or chat about it on our Message Boards.
