FLASHBACK: Reva and Josh 1989

WEDDING BELLS AHEAD ON 'GUIDING LIGHT'

By Jay Bobbin
Orlando Sentinel
July 10, 1989

Get ready for the wedding march and the throwing of rice: Reva and Josh are getting married, at long last.

Fans of the long-running CBS daytime soap GUIDING LIGHT which airs at 3 p.m. weekdays on WCPX-Channel 6 are in for a big payoff this week, as the characters of Reva Shayne (played by two-time Emmy- winner Kim Zimmer) and Joshua Lewis (Robert Newman) finally tie the knot in a ceremony that begins on Friday's episode and concludes the following Monday. As steady viewers of the show can testify, the couple certainly have weathered their share of trials and tribulations ever since they were high-school sweethearts. Reva not only married Josh's older brother, but also their father, and she later parented a child who recently was revealed to be Josh's as well. Meanwhile, Josh was paralyzed in a car accident and, later rehabilitated, he moved to Venezuela . . . only to return after an ill-fated marriage of his own to find Reva ready to marry yet another man, a plan that she subsequently abandoned.

If GUIDING LIGHT's followers are ready for this wedding, so is actress Zimmer, who joined the program in the fall of 1983 after other soap stints on ONE LIFE TO LIVE and the now-defunct THE DOCTORS. "It's been about a year since we first knew that the story was going to work toward this end," says Zimmer, "but of course, there have been a lot of forks in the road. I had no doubt that it was going to happen eventually, because it had to. I never say that I have anything to do with anything, but the fact that both Robert Newman and I wanted it to happen could have helped." Indeed, since the two actors comprise one of the most popular couples in current daytime drama, their own desire for the wedding probably didn't hurt.

Even with that wait, Zimmer said that she was taking the occasion of Reva and Josh's marriage in stride. "I just think it's about time," she said. "Six years is long enough to make an audience wait for something, so I think we owe it to the fans to satisfy their frustration." In general, the so-called "supercouples" of daytime TV (such as Eden and Cruz of NBC's SANTA BARBARA and Viki and Clint of ABC's ONE LIFE TO LIVE) usually aren't changed so much by wedding vows that they cease to have adventures, and Zimmer hopes that also will apply in this case.

"Fans gripe a lot," she said, "about the fact that nobody ever seems happily married on the soaps anymore, or that it never lasts. That's why they feel Eden and Cruz are so great, because it has lasted and those characters have been able to survive the marriage 'ho-hums.' I don't think Reva is the kind of person who would be tied down by marriage, and I hope it doesn't do that to her. We'll just have to wait and see, but there are some things coming up that I think are going to be very exciting."