Ted Danson Recalls Bill Clinton Questioning His Intentions with Mary Steenburgen Early in Dating

Ted Danson had a serious test to pass when he started dating Mary Steenburgen.

The actor, 78, has a history with former president Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton that dates back decades — and played a major role in the longevity of his relationship with wife Steenburgen.

In 1993, the actors started dating after reconnecting on the set of Pontiac Moon. Danson had just split from Whoopi Goldberg and was finalizing his divorce from his second wife, Casey Coates, at the time. Steenburgen had also recently divorced her first husband, Malcolm McDowell.

One of “the first things [Steenburgen] did was to take me to meet her dear friends in the White House,” Danson recalled during a conversation with Hillary and Bill at HISTORYTalks on Saturday, April 18, in Philadelphia.

That meeting, Hillary said, was “to have us decide whether or not [your relationship] was a good idea.”

“Trust me, when I tell you my little story, I know that,” Danson replied, before recounting the conversation he had with the former president about Steenburgen, 73.

“After dinner, Bill, Mr. President, took me around the corner, and there were three Secret Service agents behind him, all of them looking at me, and the president asked me what my intentions were [with Mary].”

Danson then asked if Bill, 79, thinks that was “fair” looking back, to which Bill said, “No, but it was effective.”

“I didn’t think I had to be fair when it came to Mary. I wanted her to be happy,” Bill explained. “And I thought, as it turned out, you’d be the best thing that ever happened to her.”

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“It turned out that both of you found each other at the right time in your life,” Bill said of Danson and Steenburgen, who married in 1995. “And we’re grateful for you.”

Danson is in agreement that the timing was perfect for him and Steenburgen. “I had, about a year before [we started dating], decided I want to become a more emotionally mature, honest human being,” he told PEOPLE in 2024. “I worked very hard at it, or I don’t think Mary Steenburgen would’ve even seen me.”

“I was not really fully emotionally baked until shortly before I met Mary,” he said. “Thank God we didn’t meet earlier.”