--- title: Mary Tyler Moore Dead at 80: The Face of Change on TV description: Mary Tyler Moore, who died at 80, gained fame playing a housewife on the Dick Van Dyke Show but made television history as a career girl. canonical: https://time.com/4649126/mary-tyler-moore-history-time-cover/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-01-25T22:29:56.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T02:56:39.138Z article:section: History og:title: How Mary Tyler Moore Captured a Key Moment in History for American Women og:description: The star has died at 80 og:url: https://time.com/4649126/mary-tyler-moore-history-time-cover/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt47a5d748dc4c6b17/6988b73797cdff3d4c6af3fd/1101741028_400.jpg?branch=production&width=828&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Oct. 28, 1974 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Mary Tyler Moore Captured a Key Moment in History for American Women twitter:description: The star has died at 80 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt47a5d748dc4c6b17/6988b73797cdff3d4c6af3fd/1101741028_400.jpg?branch=production&width=828&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How Mary Tyler Moore Captured a Key Moment in History for American Women  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Jan 25, 2017 10:29 PM UTC  The Oct. 28, 1974, cover of TIME The Oct. 28, 1974, cover of TIMECover Credit: JIM CAMPBELL  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Jan 25, 2017 10:29 PM UTC It can be hard to separate [Mary Tyler Moore](http://time.com/4649124/mary-tyler-moore-death-react/), the groundbreaking comic actor who has [died](http://time.com/4649136/mary-tyler-moore-dead-80/) at 80, from Mary Richards, the character she played on _The Mary Tyler Moore Show_. When she and erstwhile coworker Valerie Harper (whose _MTM_ character had gotten a spin-off) were profiled in [a TIME cover story](http://time.com/vault/issue/1974-10-28/page/1/) in 1974, the magazine took a look at the “large gap between the show girl and the real one.” But both versions of Mary, real and fictional, had backstory. Mary Richards was newly single, and the big-city move that got the show’s plot going represented trading housewife hopes for something new and different. Meanwhile, Moore’s career included work that came before her eponymous sitcom—and, to understand why that role was historically important, and not merely great television, those earlier roles are key. Launching her TV career right out of high school, Moore went from playing an elf in commercials for household appliances to playing a secretary on a detective show on which the gimmick was that her hands and legs were seen on screen, but not her face. It was when she eventually landed a starring role on _The Dick Van Dyke Show_ that fame really arrived. In one of her first appearances in the pages of TIME, a few years later, she was [praised](http://time.com/vault/issue/1965-04-09/page/70/) as TV’s “favorite average housewife” for her role as Laura Petrie_._ The write-up, in retrospect, is revealing: --- > “” --- When _The Dick Van Dyke Show_ premiered, even though the calendar read 1961, the period that today might be thought of as “the ’60s” had not yet begun. [_The Feminine Mystique_ ](http://time.com/3711230/betty-friedan/)was still two years away. Though Moore’s housewife may have worn (Capri) pants, she was essentially a reflection of a pre-women’s-lib world. The _Dick Van Dyke Show_ ended in 1966\. By the time the actor walked into the office at the fictional WJM-TV on _The Mary Tyler Moore Show_ in 1970, the world had changed. Her new character, Mary Richards, was a happy, single career woman. Laura Petrie and Mary Richards were both beloved television characters, but it was in the gap between them — a period of about four years in the late ’60s during which Moore was, ironically, much less visible to fans, as she took a role in a Broadway flop and struggled with personal health problems — that Mary Tyler Moore captured history changing. _The Mary Tyler Moore Show_ launched to decidedly mixed reviews (the story, set behind the scenes at a Minneapolis TV station, [was](http://time.com/vault/issue/1970-09-28/page/68/) “an injustice to even the worst of local TV news,” TIME noted) but, thanks in large part to Moore’s gifts, it [quickly](http://time.com/vault/issue/1972-12-04/page/87/) became one of critics’ and viewers’ favorite shows on the air. The show’s portrayal of women was a big part of that success. Mary worked, she had a romantic life, she was happy and attractive in her 30s and, perhaps most importantly of all, she was good. “On every show \[Moore and Harper\] prove that women need not be dingbats or contralto foghorns to win applause or affection,” TIME noted in the 1974 cover story. [_Read the full cover story here in the TIME Vault_](http://time.com/vault/issue/1974-10-28/page/1/) By the time _The Mary Tyler Moore Show_ went off the air in 1977, Mary Richards had become what Lance Morrow [called](http://time.com/vault/issue/1977-03-14/page/53/) a “a humanely plausible version” of what it was like to be an American woman in the 1970s. And Mary Tyler Moore and Mary Richards did share at least one more thing in common besides their names — and it’s something that suggests Moore was happy with the changing world she helped epitomize. “I am a career girl. I couldn’t be happy living Laura’s life,” she [told](http://time.com/vault/issue/1965-04-09/page/70/) TIME in 1965, of her _Dick Van Dyke Show_ role, years before her own show began. “If I wasn’t an actress, I’d have to be doing something else — I’d go to school or I’d be a nurse, but I’d do something.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4649126/mary-tyler-moore-history-time-cover/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4649126/mary-tyler-moore-history-time-cover/"},"headline":"How Mary Tyler Moore Captured a Key Moment in History for American Women","datePublished":"2017-01-25T22:29:56.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T02:56:39.138Z","description":"The star has died at 80","url":"https://time.com/4649126/mary-tyler-moore-history-time-cover/","keywords":["remembrance","Television","People"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt47a5d748dc4c6b17/6988b73797cdff3d4c6af3fd/1101741028_400.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt47a5d748dc4c6b17/6988b73797cdff3d4c6af3fd/1101741028_400.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Oct. 28, 1974","caption":"Oct. 28, 1974","creditText":"Cover Credit: JIM CAMPBELL","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/remembrance/","name":"remembrance"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4649126/mary-tyler-moore-history-time-cover/","name":"How Mary Tyler Moore Captured a Key Moment in History for American Women"}}]}] ```