Former "Family Ties" star Meredith Baxter married her long-time girlfriend Nancy Locke. It's Baxter's fourth marriage, the first with a woman.
TMZ claims the 66-year-old obtained her marriage license in Beverly Hills on Friday just ahead of her upcoming wedding, which she has already sent invitations out for, but the wedding date is unknown.
The Emmy winner, who shared the screen for years with Michael J. Fox and Justine Bateman on their hit 80s family sitcom started dating Locke in 2006, but did not come out as a lesbian until Dec. 2009.
Baxter's admission came after the National Enquirer had one month earlier published photos of the actress with a "female friend" aboard a Caribbean cruise sponsored by the lesbian travel company Sweet.
In an interview with NBC News' Matt Lauer on the "Today" Show the mother of five said, being a lesbian was a later-in-life recognition.
"I am a lesbian and it was a later-in-life recognition," she said. "Some people would say, well, you're living a lie and, you know, the truth is not at all. This has only been for the past seven years. I've always lived a very private life. To come out and disclose stuff is very antithetical to who I am."
In 2011, she talked in depth to Oprah about her romantic life, saying she was never really physically comfortable with men, and was relieved when she discovered it was because she was actually not straight.
Baxter was married to Robert Bush from 1966 to 1971, then David Birney from 1974 to 1990. Her last marriage was to Michael Blodgett from 1995 to 2000. Baxter claims Birney abused her more mental and emotional than physical.
"'The truth is, you don't have to be abused physically too many times. A couple times and you know that's always on the back burner," she said. "It's the continuing corrosive effect of being belittled, denigrated in front of children, second-guessed, called down so that I have no voice. I had no voice for so long, which is probably, ultimately, why I felt I had to say something at some point."
According to The Daily Mail, Baxter wrote about her choice to come out in her memoir "Untied".The actress mentioned a relationship with a woman named Paula changed it all.
"I felt alive in a way that I had not experienced," she said. "Life was rife with possibilities."
