Exclusive Interview
‘DAYS’ Star Melissa Reeves Reveals Scott Reeves’ Surprise Proposal Details, 36 Years Later
Melissa Reeves recently marked 40 years since she first joined the cast of Days of Our Lives as Jennifer Horton Deveraux, but that wasn’t the only significant milestone she celebrated this year. Back in March, she and her husband, Scott Reeves (Steven Webber, General Hospital et al.), toasted 35 years of marriage.
“I met him on Days [of Our Lives],” Melissa tells Swooon of their first encounter in 1988, when she was three years into her run and Scott was cast as Jake Hogansen. “The day I was supposed to work with him, he got violently ill with the flu.”
Once recovered, Scott invited Melissa to his place. “Scott was having a party, and he was like, ‘Hey, do you want to come over to my house?'” Melissa recalls. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, but where do you live? I don’t drive on freeways. I’m too scared. I take Ventura Boulevard everywhere. So, if I can get to your house from Ventura Boulevard, I’ll come over.’ And he’s like, ‘Well, you can, but it’s gonna take you about an hour.’ I was like, ‘No problem.’ And that was the beginning. I went to his mom and dad’s house the very next day and was with him every day after that.”
Barely a month later, Scott was ready to make it official when Melissa came to visit him on location of a movie he was filming. “He went to do Friday the 13th [Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan] in Canada, and my mother-in-law actually hid my ring in my suitcase, and I didn’t know it,” Melissa muses. “When I got there, I was just taking my stuff out, and I can’t remember how she said it, like, ‘Oh, just give this to Scott. He wanted me to pack this for him.’ And I didn’t even think about it. It was just so funny. I had no clue.”
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The proposal, which took place on April 1, 1989, was as romantic as any soap opera storyline. “We went to Stanley Park to this little place called The Teahouse, and I was cold, and he actually gave me his leather jacket,” Melissa recalls. “The ring was in the pocket, and I had no idea, and I never put my hands in the pocket. I just kind of had it around my shoulders. And then we went out onto this one point called Lions Gate Bridge, and he proposed to me outside at night. It was so beautiful.”
Just as their wedding plans were taking shape, life threw them a curveball. “Scott ended up having seizures and having to have brain surgery from a sinus infection,” Melissa explains. “So, they were like, ‘You can’t get married.’ And we ended up putting it off just a couple months because of that surgery. It was crazy, but we were like, ‘Look at this, we saved all this money.'”
When Scott was fully recovered, they set their sights on March 23, 1990, for their nuptials, but even that day had its share of drama because of Melissa’s work schedule at DAYS. “We just booked something last minute, and we were getting married on a Friday night,” she explains. “And they wouldn’t put me up first so I could get out. I remember Herb Stein was directing. I was like, ‘Herb, I’m getting married! I have to rush out.’ So, then I was up last, and I’m running out the door, but I was like, ‘Well, thank goodness I have my makeup on. I’m ready to go.’ I put on my wedding dress and drove to the little church.”
Their honeymoon had to wait, but the newlyweds didn’t mind. “We couldn’t get the time off, but we went to Hawaii 18 months later when I was three months pregnant with [daughter] Emily,” Melissa says. “But we were so young and in love and having a ball, and we were like, ‘Oh, we’re just having a good time.’ Nothing was a big deal. We weren’t like, ‘I can’t believe we’re not getting a honeymoon.’ We were just going with it, having fun.”
Three and a half decades later, that easygoing spirit has matured into something deeper. Melissa admits the journey hasn’t always been easy — after all, Hollywood marriages rarely last this long — but faith has been their anchor. “Marriage is hard, and I don’t even know how people make it without God in their life,” she reflects. “There’s just a humble submission when you go, ‘We made a covenant to each other, and we are in this till the end, no doubt.'”
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That faith has carried them through every season. “There are so many days where you go, ‘Oh, I just don’t even want to look at you today. Go do something,'” she continues. “But we love each other so much. We’ve loved each other since we were so young and you just go, ‘We’re not going to quit on this. We’re not doing that to our children, and we’re not doing that to ourselves. We’re staying in it.’ We totally believe that the Lord can restore marriages, and he can heal marriages, and you just hang in there and you stick with it.”
Melissa takes pride in the life they’ve built together. “What we love about our marriage is that we’ve never given up,” she notes. “I always say, ‘If you can just hang in there, you’re going to come out the other side and you’re going to be like, we did it!’ And it’s so rewarding. We had to grow up together. We really did. When you’re an actor and you’re making money and you’re being spoiled, you can lose a sense of reality, for sure. But it’s been a wonderful 35 years.”
Their biggest joy these days? Watching their family grow. Emily, born in 1992, and Larry, born in 1997, are now married with six children of their own between them. “Everyone was like, ‘They’re so young.’ And I’m like, ‘You know what? Our kids are so grounded in their faith,'” Melissa shares. “I mean, Scott and I are inspired by our children’s faith. To watch them get married young and have these children and just seek the Lord first in their marriages, you go, ‘Oh, what an example, even for us oldies.’ We watch these young people say, ‘This is what’s important. This is what life is about. It’s not about a paycheck, it’s not about a career, it’s about your family, your wife and husband and your children.'”
Looking back, Melissa says she wouldn’t change a thing. Every twist, every challenge and every joy has led her here. “Scott’s my best friend,” she says. “We laugh, and now we’re traveling together and enjoying all these grandbabies and just having time of our life. It’s the best. I tell my kids all the time now, “I’m so glad we had you guys, because we get grandkids out of it. We don’t have to do any of the hard stuff. We just get to have fun.’ They just crack up. I love it.”
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