10/02/2026
She fell 22 feet from a stage platform, shattered her face, and the one person who saved her was the man who had already been saving her for 5 years. Their marriage lasted 50 years. This is the love story Hollywood could never script.
In the mid-1960s, Ann-Margret was one of the most electrifying performers in America. She had starred alongside Elvis Presley in Viva Las Vegas. She had dazzled in Bye Bye Birdie. Her Las Vegas shows crackled with energy and her beauty was undeniable. But behind the spotlight, she carried a quiet ache. As a child in Sweden, she had been separated from her father for five and a half years while he worked in America. That early wound left her with a deep fear of abandonment that fame could never fill.
Roger Smith understood something about that kind of loneliness. He had been a star himself on the hit television series 77 Sunset Strip, playing a suave private detective from 1958 to 1963. But his health had already betrayed him once. In 1962, doctors discovered a blood clot in his brain that required surgery. His first marriage to Australian actress Victoria Shaw had ended. He was raising three young children. He knew what it felt like to carry private pain behind a public face.
They met in the mid-1960s when Smith invited Ann-Margret to a San Francisco nightclub where he was singing. He took her to dinner the next night. On the third date, she knew. She later said she sensed immediately that he would protect her, that she could depend on him. What struck her most was how he treated her. He did not see an icon or a prize. He saw a person. By their third date, Ann-Margret was certain she had found the man she would marry.
Her parents were not convinced. Her father did not think a divorced man with three children and an uncertain career was good enough for his daughter. Her mother argued with her until both were in tears. But Ann-Margret held firm.
On May 8, 1967, they married at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. It was a small civil ceremony
