Delta Burke HOW LOVE Saved Me

THE DESIGNING WOMEN ALUM FOUND HER SOULMATE JUST WHEN SHE NEEDED HIM MOST 

- LOUISE A. BARILE

Delta Burke hit rock bottom when she was riding high. During her years on Designing Women, her depression became so severe, she wound up in her car, gobbling Xanax with a gun at her side, contemplating suicide. Luckily, she called her husband, actor Gerald McRaney, instead. “I didn’t know where I was, but he found me,” Delta says.

The couple, who will celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary on May 28, share one of Hollywood’s most supportive and endearing relationships. “I love my life truly for the first time. And I love him desperately,” says Delta, 67, who gives thanks to the This Is Us Emmy winner for his unconditional love. “No one had ever loved me completely for me, not even my mother or grandmother. They would judge what I looked like. He never did.”

Gerald, 76, met the Florida-reared actress when he did a 1987 guest appearance on Designing Women, where she played self-centered former beauty queen Suzanne Sugarbaker. Like her character, Delta started winning pageants when she was in high school. “This is similar between me and Suzanne — I love crowns,” she says. But Delta lacked the confidence that Suzanne seemed to possess in excess. “It took everything in me to play a character that thought she was so hot to start with,” confesses Delta. “I never thought I was good enough.”

A ROUGH ROAD