Why Melissa Gilbert Called Blending Her Family With Timothy Busfield’s ‘a Challenge’

Melissa Gilbert and Timothy Busfield got married in 2013. It was the third marriage for both actors, and they both had children from previous relationships. Blending families can be tricky. The case of Gilbert and Busfield was no exception. The Little House on the Prairie alum initially believed the task would be easier than it ended up being. “Easy” was not how it all went down. 

Melissa Gilbert and Timothy Busfield’s previous marriages and kids 

Gilbert married her first husband, Bo Brinkman, in 1988. It was a tumultuous union colored by infidelity and high drama. The couple had one child together —Dakota—and divorced in 1994. The Laura Ingalls actor’s second husband was Bruce Boxleitner. They married in 1995 and divorced in 2011. Together, Gilbert and Boxleitner had one child—Michael.  

Busfield had also been married two previous times when he met Gilbert—to Radha Delamarter from 1981 to 1986 and Jenny Merwin from 1988 to 2007. From those marriages, Busfield had three children: Willy, Daisy, and Sam.

The first time Gilbert and Busfield’s kids met  

After Gilbert and Busfield got engaged, they invited their children to a dinner in Los Angeles for everybody to meet. Gilbert was hoping to receive everyone’s blessing. She thought the evening was sure to go off without a hitch. 

“As we got ready for dinner, I told Tim that I had blended a family before and assured him, ‘I know how to do this. And since our offspring are all grown-up, I think this time will be even easier,’” she wrote in her 2022 memoir, Back to the Prairie. 

But Gilbert was wrong.

“I realized that blending this family was going to be more of a challenge than I had anticipated,” she wrote. “Tim’s kids were adults with their own fully formed ideas about relationships, family, and life. They were also still nursing some very hurt feelings about stuff in the past, and I realized that I had to tread very lightly.”  

The Little House actor writes that her boys were “more accepting.” 

“They had been to this rodeo before and being party to the Gilbert side of the family had taught them that even when s*** happens, as it inevitably does to everyone, it may not turn out to be as horrible as you first think,” she wrote.

Everyone would eventually have ‘moments of togetherness and fun’

There’s no denying that initially, it wasn’t the smoothest transition blending the Gilbert and Busfield children. 

“Blended families are full of sensitivities and trapdoors, mine included, and as dinner that night taught me, I had to adjust my expectations and allow everyone to be who they need to be and feel whatever they need to feel,” wrote Gilbert. 

Eventually, everyone did come together. Gilbert and Busfield have been married for 10 years, so there’s been lots of opportunities.   

“Our blended family would have moments of togetherness and fun in the future, but for now, our effort at meeting and greeting and blending was an important lesson for me in learning to love fully without an attachment to the result,” she wrote.

Read more about Gilbert’s life and family in Back to the Prairie: A Home Remade, A Life Rediscovered.