She Put Her Heart Into Her Marriage—Ann-Margret Was Left Heartbroken When He Died

Ann‑Margret had the world at her feet. Hollywood at her command. Even Elvis Presley at her side. Yet the choice that defined her life didn’t happen under bright lights, but in the quiet, painful years that followed. A stolen plane. A shattered face. An incurable illness.

Ann-Margret’s life reads like a Hollywood script, but the real story was written far from the cameras. She was the dazzling star who dated Elvis and survived a 22-foot fall that nearly destroyed her face, returning to the stage just days later. Through addiction, injury, and reinvention, one person was always there, quietly holding her together: Roger Smith, the actor who gave up his own career to manage, protect, and love her.

When his body began to fail from myasthenia gravis and later Parkinson’s, she reversed roles without hesitation. She turned down work, nursed him through pain and weakness, and stood by him until his final breath in 2017. They never had children together, a loss she still calls one of her deepest sorrows. Yet when she looks back, she doesn’t speak first of fame, Oscars, or Elvis. She calls her marriage to Roger her greatest pride—a 50-year promise kept, night and day, wing to broken wing.