Wishing a happy 80th birthday to Valerie Harper!

She made it to this milestone and how happy we are for Valerie Harper.

Happy 80th birthday to a national treasure.

Seven years ago, it seemed as though we would soon be losing Valerie to brain cancer. But breakthrough treatments saved her life and she’s still here although she is not doing well these days. But after her treatments, she competed on Dancing With the Stars and took on acting roles.

Have loved her since the first time I saw her as Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Valerie won four Emmys for playing that classic character for four seasons on MTM and five seasons on her own sitcom, Rhoda.

So what a thrill it was the first time I got to interview Valerie Harper many years later.

I was the entertainment industry reporter for the Los Angeles Daily News and was covering the race for Screen Actors Guild president between Valerie and Melissa Gilbert. Miss Little House on the Prairie had just said something about Miss Harper that needed responding to and I managed to catch her on her cell phone literally minutes before she went on stage in Broadway’s The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife.

It was all very exciting.

Her career has been a lot more than Rhoda. There was the hit sitcom Valerie, the Tony-nominated Broadway triumph in Looped, film roles in Chapter Two, Freebie and the Bean, Blame it On Rio and The Last Married Couple in America, scores of TV movies (Strange Voices, The Shadow Box, A Friend to Die For, Mary and Rhoda), and memorable guest spots on Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives and Melrose Place. In 2005 through 2006, Harper portrayed Golda Meir in a US National tour of the one-woman drama Golda’s Balcony. A film of this production was released in 2007.

Happy birthday Valerie! You are appreciated and beloved!