How Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz Tried To Hide Their Age Gap From The World (& Failed)

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Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's marriage had many strange aspects, and how they handled their age gap was no exception. While celebrity couples with big age gaps are nothing new in Hollywood, Ball and Arnaz felt the need to hide theirs because he was actually her junior. Born on August 6, 1911, Ball was five and a half years older than Arnaz, whose birthday was on March 2, 1917. This was the '40s, and a relationship between an older woman and a younger man was definitely controversial at the time.

When they tied that knot on November 30, 1940, Ball was 29 and Arnaz was 23. To dodge the social criticism, they opted to change their birthdays on their marriage certificate, listing both their birth years as 1914. Their true ages eventually came out, with public documents surfacing as they became more famous. 

Ball and Arnaz had never been a conventional couple. For starters, she was white while he was Cuban, making them the first interracial couple on American television. While they could hide their ages, they could hardly hide their ethnicities. Given this, "I Love Lucy" nearly didn't happen. "CBS and its sponsor, Philip Morris cigarettes, were adamantly opposed to this," Kathleen Brady, author of "Lucille: The Life of Lucille Ball," told NPR in 2014. Luckily for TV fans everywhere, they eventually caved. 

Lucille Ball apparently liked them younger. After ending her tumultuous marriage to Desi Arnaz, Ball tied the knot with Gary Morton. Born in December 1924, he was 13 years younger than her. The age difference seemingly played no meaningful role in either of her marriages. Ball's relationship with Arnaz ended amid his numerous affairs. She put up with a lot for two decades, but eventually had enough. "I was hoping in my heart that maybe everything would change, that a miracle might happen," she said, according to author Warren G. Harris in his 2012 book, "Lucy & Desi: The Legendary Love Story of Television's Most Famous Couple," (via Vanity Fair). "But people don't change. Desi was self-destructive," Ball added.

Ball and Arnaz divorced in 1960, the same year she met Morton. By 1961, Ball, then 50, was a married woman again. The marriage experience couldn't have been more different the second time around. Whereas she lived a life of ups and downs with Arnaz, she found stable ground with Morton. That's exactly what she wanted. "I'm looking forward to a nice quiet life," she said then (via Time).

Morton didn't disappoint. "Boy, did I pick a winner! After 19 years with that Latin lover, I never expected to marry again but I'm glad I did!" Ball wrote in a 1983 letter to a friend (via Golden Globes). Ball was married to her second husband until her death in 1989. Morton remarried in 1996 and stayed married until his death in 1999.