For millions of moviegoers, Ann-Margret will always be the dazzling red-haired star who danced alongside Elvis Presley, raced across the screen in Viva Las Vegas, and became one of Hollywood’s most recognizable sex symbols of the 1960s.
But away from the cameras, there was another role that eventually mattered more to her than almost anything Hollywood could offer.
Wife.
For 50 years, Ann-Margret shared her life with actor and producer Roger Smith. Their marriage survived fame, career pressures, a devastating accident and decades of serious illness. When Smith’s health deteriorated, Ann-Margret increasingly turned down professional opportunities so she could remain close to him.
“I kept saying, ‘No, no, no,’ to everything because I was taking care of him,” she later explained. news.amomama.com
Smith died in 2017 at 84.
For Ann-Margret, who had spent virtually her entire adult life with him, the loss changed everything. Yet three years later, she was beginning to work and embrace life again, making clear that growing older did not mean disappearing.
“You’re not dead when you reach a certain age,” she said. news.amomama.com
Her story is one of Hollywood glamour, but ultimately it became something far more intimate: a story about choosing a person over a career when that person needed her most.
Before Roger, Ann-Margret Was One of the Biggest Stars of the ’60s
Long before she became known simply as Ann-Margret, she was Ann-Margret Olsson, a little girl born in Sweden in 1941.
Music was present almost from the beginning.
She later remembered singing Swedish songs with her mother as a child, discovering early that performing gave her a kind of energy she couldn’t find anywhere else. news.amomama.com
Her family eventually moved to the United States, settling near Chicago.
Ann-Margret threw herself into performing.
She sang.
She danced.
She acted.
And Hollywood noticed.
By the beginning of the 1960s, she had signed with 20th Century Fox and was rapidly being positioned as a major new talent.
Then came Bye Bye Birdie.
The 1963 musical turned the young actress into a sensation. Her combination of dancing ability, charisma and screen presence was impossible to ignore.
But an even more iconic pairing was coming.
Then She Met Elvis Presley
In 1964, Ann-Margret starred opposite Elvis Presley in Viva Las Vegas.
The chemistry was obvious on screen.
It was also real.
The two became romantically involved during production, and their relationship would become one of the most discussed chapters of both stars’ personal lives.
Elvis was already connected to Priscilla Beaulieu, whom he would eventually marry.
Ann-Margret later treated her relationship with Elvis with considerable discretion, even while acknowledging the powerful bond they had shared.
But Elvis wasn’t ultimately the man with whom she would build her life.
That man was Roger Smith.
Roger Smith Had Already Been a Star Himself
Smith wasn’t simply “Ann-Margret’s husband.”
He had his own Hollywood career.
Born in 1932, he became particularly well known through the television series 77 Sunset Strip, playing private investigator Jeff Spencer.
Tall and handsome, Smith had the looks of a classic television leading man.
But his life changed dramatically after meeting Ann-Margret.
The two first crossed paths in the 1960s. By then, Smith had been married before and was the father of three children — Tracey, Jordan and Dallas.
Ann-Margret and Smith married on May 8, 1967, in Las Vegas.
She would later admit the wedding itself wasn’t exactly the glamorous fantasy people might imagine.
But the marriage that followed lasted 50 years.
Their Relationship Became a Professional Partnership Too
Roger gradually stepped away from acting and took an enormous role in managing his wife’s career.
For Ann-Margret, the arrangement worked.
They were partners privately and professionally.
A friend later recalled that the two disliked being separated while working on opposite sides of the country. Smith managing his wife’s career allowed them to spend far more time together. news.amomama.com
Ann-Margret herself once described just how many roles Roger filled in her life.
She said she had found in him a father figure, friend, lover, manager and businessman all rolled into one. news.amomama.com
It sounds intensely intertwined because it was.
Their lives were not neatly divided into his and hers.
They built one together.
And that bond would soon be tested in ways neither could have predicted.
Ann-Margret Nearly Died in a Terrifying Fall
In September 1972, Ann-Margret was performing in Lake Tahoe when she suffered a devastating accident.
She fell approximately 22 feet from a stage platform.
The injuries were severe.
She suffered facial fractures and other injuries requiring extensive medical treatment. The accident threatened not only her career but her life.
Roger rushed to her side.
Ann-Margret underwent surgery, and remarkably, she eventually returned to performing.
The incident became one of the defining moments of their marriage.
But years later, their roles would reverse.
This time, Roger would become the one facing serious health problems.
And Ann-Margret would become the caregiver.
Roger Smith Was Diagnosed With Myasthenia Gravis
Around 1980, Smith was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, a chronic autoimmune neuromuscular disease that can cause serious muscle weakness.
It became a long-term health battle.
Smith had already largely stepped away from acting, but the diagnosis fundamentally altered his life.
Ann-Margret stayed beside him.
Their marriage continued through the 1980s, 1990s and into the new millennium.
And eventually another serious diagnosis entered their lives.
Smith developed Parkinson’s disease as well. news.amomama.com
As his condition progressed, Ann-Margret’s priorities changed.
Hollywood could wait.
Roger couldn’t.
She Started Saying “No” to Work
For a performer who had spent decades saying yes to movies, television appearances, stage performances and concerts, Ann-Margret began turning opportunities away.
The reason was remarkably simple.
Her husband needed her.
“I kept saying, ‘No, no, no,’ to everything because I was taking care of him,” she recalled. news.amomama.com
There is something especially revealing about that sentence.
It doesn’t sound like a grand Hollywood sacrifice.
It sounds practical.
This was her husband.
He was sick.
She wanted to be there.
So she stayed.
Their Marriage Outlasted Almost Everything Around Them
Hollywood marriages are often measured in months or a handful of years.
Ann-Margret and Roger Smith reached five decades.
Their marriage survived enormous changes in both of their careers and in the entertainment industry itself.
When they married in 1967, Elvis Presley was still making movies.
The Beatles were still together.
Color television was only becoming standard in American homes.
By their 50th anniversary in 2017, people carried smartphones capable of streaming movies anywhere in the world.
Through all of it, Ann-Margret and Roger remained together.
She later explained their longevity in strikingly uncomplicated terms: both of them wanted the marriage to work. news.amomama.com
Ann-Margret Never Had Biological Children
There was one part of family life Ann-Margret had hoped would unfold differently.
She wanted children.
But she never had biological children of her own.
Instead, she became stepmother to Roger’s three children from his previous marriage: Tracey, Jordan and Dallas.
Over the decades, those relationships became deeply important.
After Roger’s death, his children continued looking out for Ann-Margret. news.amomama.com
It was another legacy of their 50-year marriage.
Roger didn’t merely leave her memories.
He left her family.
Roger Smith Died in 2017
On June 4, 2017, Roger Smith died at Sherman Oaks Hospital in Los Angeles.
He was 84.
His death came only weeks after the couple celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.
For Ann-Margret, the loss was enormous.
This wasn’t simply the death of her spouse.
She had lost the man who had been her husband, manager, confidant, business partner and constant companion for half a century.
The person around whom much of her adult life had been organized was suddenly gone.
There was no quick return to normal.
How could there be?
Life After 50 Years Together
Grief after a marriage that long is difficult to compress into a neat Hollywood comeback narrative.
Ann-Margret had known Roger since she was a young woman.
She was in her twenties when they married.
She was 76 when he died.
Almost every major chapter of her adult life had included him.
The movie premieres.
The performances.
The accidents.
The illnesses.
The career decisions.
The quiet days nobody photographed.
Fifty years of ordinary life existed behind the glamorous red-carpet photographs.
When Roger disappeared from that life, Ann-Margret had to discover what came next.
Three Years Later, She Was Moving Forward Again
By 2020, three years after Smith’s death, Ann-Margret was working again and speaking about aging with characteristic determination.
Her message was wonderfully uncomplicated:
“You’re not dead when you reach a certain age.” news.amomama.com
It was classic Ann-Margret.
The woman who had once exploded across movie screens with almost impossible energy wasn’t interested in being told that her life had an expiration date.
She had experienced enormous loss.
But loss wasn’t going to be the final chapter.
She Returned to the Screen
Ann-Margret continued acting in later life rather than quietly disappearing from Hollywood.
Her later work included television and film projects that allowed audiences who remembered her from the 1960s to see a completely different version of the performer.
She appeared in projects such as Ray Donovan and The Kominsky Method, and in 2021 she appeared in the romantic comedy Queen Bees alongside Ellen Burstyn, James Caan and Jane Curtin.
The woman who had once been marketed largely through youth, beauty and sex appeal was now playing characters shaped by decades of lived experience.
That evolution carried its own power.
Then She Did Something Nobody Expected
Ann-Margret didn’t merely return to acting.
She returned to music.
In 2023, at 81, she released the album Born to Be Wild.
Think about that for a second.
More than 60 years after she began recording music, Ann-Margret was still making records.
The project featured classic rock songs and collaborations with musicians including Pete Townshend and Joe Perry.
It was exuberant rather than nostalgic.
And perhaps that’s exactly why it made sense.
Ann-Margret had never really been a quiet performer.
Age didn’t suddenly turn her into one.
The Red Hair Became Part of Hollywood History
The visual image of Ann-Margret remains inseparable from her career.
The red hair.
The dramatic eyes.
The dancing.
The fitted costumes.
The almost electric physicality.
She became a symbol of 1960s Hollywood femininity while simultaneously being a far more accomplished performer than the “sex symbol” label suggested.
She earned Academy Award nominations for Carnal Knowledge and Tommy and accumulated Emmy recognition across her career.
In 2010, decades after her movie breakthrough, she won her first Primetime Emmy for a guest appearance on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
Her career wasn’t a brief flash of 1960s nostalgia.
It stretched across generations.
RARE PHOTOS Reveal a Marriage Behind the Hollywood Image
Photographs of Ann-Margret and Roger Smith across the decades tell their own story.
Early images show an impossibly glamorous Hollywood couple.
She is the fiery movie star.
He is the handsome former television actor.
Later photographs are different.
Their faces age.
Their appearances change.
Roger increasingly deals with health limitations.
Eventually he is photographed using a wheelchair, with Ann-Margret beside him.
Yet the physical closeness remains striking.
A hand on his shoulder.
Her body leaning toward his.
His arm near hers.
Those photographs are poignant because they document something celebrity images rarely capture so clearly:
Time.
Not just fame.
Not just youth.
Time spent together.
Her Decision Wasn’t Really About Giving Up Hollywood
It’s tempting to frame Ann-Margret’s caregiving years as though she chose between love and ambition.
But after 50 years of marriage, that distinction probably felt artificial.
Roger had supported her career for decades.
He had managed her professionally.
He had stood beside her through her catastrophic 1972 accident.
He had helped create the conditions that allowed Ann-Margret to remain Ann-Margret.
When his health declined, she stayed.
She didn’t permanently abandon her identity as an entertainer.
She simply reordered her priorities.
And when the time eventually came, she returned.
Roger’s Illness Changed Both Their Lives
Myasthenia gravis and Parkinson’s disease transformed Smith’s later years.
But reducing him entirely to illness would miss much of who he had been.
Before becoming Ann-Margret’s manager, he was a recognizable actor in his own right.
His work on 77 Sunset Strip made him a familiar television face during an era when weekly network series could turn actors into household names.
His later decision to manage Ann-Margret reflected the unusual structure of their partnership.
He wasn’t standing outside her career.
He was helping shape it.
That made her later role as his caregiver feel like another reversal within a marriage in which each had supported the other at different moments.
Their Love Story Was Never Perfect — It Was Durable
Celebrity relationships are often romanticized after one partner dies.
But what stands out about Ann-Margret and Roger isn’t some claim that every day of their 50 years was perfect.
It’s durability.
They faced professional pressures.
A catastrophic accident.
Chronic illness.
A changing industry.
Aging.
And eventually the reality that one spouse would have to care for the other.
They remained married.
Ann-Margret once attributed that longevity to both of them simply wanting the relationship to succeed. news.amomama.com
Sometimes lasting love is less cinematic than people expect.
It is repeatedly choosing the same person.
The Woman Behind the Hollywood Legend
It’s easy to remember Ann-Margret in Viva Las Vegas.
Young.
Red-haired.
Dancing opposite Elvis.
It’s harder to reconcile that image with photographs taken half a century later, showing her standing beside Roger as age and illness transformed their lives.
Yet both women are the same person.
The young star who captivated Hollywood became the wife who turned down jobs to care for her husband.
Then the widow who had to rebuild her life became an actress and singer again.
That entire arc is what makes her story remarkable.
She Never Really Retired From Life
Ann-Margret’s comment about age perhaps reveals more about her than any list of credits.
“You’re not dead when you reach a certain age.” news.amomama.com
After Roger died, she could easily have withdrawn permanently.
She had nothing left to prove professionally.
Her place in Hollywood history had been secure for decades.
Instead, she kept moving.
She acted.
She recorded music.
She appeared publicly.
She continued embracing the energy that had defined her from the beginning.
It wasn’t about recreating the 22-year-old woman from Bye Bye Birdie.
It was about refusing to believe that only the young version of herself mattered.
More Than 60 Years After Hollywood First Fell in Love With Her
Ann-Margret’s career has now stretched across an extraordinary period of entertainment history.
She worked with Elvis Presley.
She became one of the great visual icons of 1960s cinema.
She earned Oscar nominations.
She moved between movies, television, music and live performance.
She survived a potentially fatal accident.
She spent decades beside a husband battling serious illness.
She lost him after 50 years of marriage.
And she found a way to keep going.
That final part may be the most meaningful.
The Love Story Behind the RARE PHOTOS
The glamorous photographs of Ann-Margret and Roger Smith are beautiful.
But the later ones tell the deeper story.
They show what happened after youth disappeared.
After the premieres.
After Hollywood stopped being the center of everything.
Roger’s health declined, and Ann-Margret stayed close.
She said no to jobs because caring for him mattered more.
He died shortly after they reached their 50th anniversary.
And for a time, her world became much quieter.
Then, slowly, she returned.
Not as the same woman who had once danced beside Elvis.
She couldn’t be.
She returned as someone who had loved a man for half a century, cared for him through illness, lost him and discovered that her own life was still waiting.
Three years after his death, her words made that perfectly clear:
“You’re not dead when you reach a certain age.”
And Ann-Margret has spent the years since proving exactly that. news.amomama.com
For more glimpses into the lives of stars, check out rare photos of Lisa Rinna’s dramatic transformation and Wendy Williams stepping out with a much younger man. You might also enjoy seeing the striking grandson of a Hollywood legend.
