Charlotte Rae's Memoir Discusses Gay Husband

Charlotte Rae (center) with Facts of Life costar Geri Jewell (left)

Charlotte Rae, the actress famed for playing beloved housemother Edna Garrett on The Facts of Life, is seeking a publisher for her, which discusses, among other things, the fact that her former husband, John Strauss, was gay, the New York Post reports.

While Rae is known to be supportive of LGBT people, such as Facts of Life costar Geri Jewell, she reveals in the memoir that Strauss’s coming-out shook her up, as such a revelation likely would do to any straight spouse: “John’s secret confirmed my feelings of inferiority,” Rae writes. “That I was less than a woman. ... That I didn’t deserve to be loved and valued.”

Rae was married to Strauss, a composer and musical director, for 25 years. They divorced in the mid 1970s, and he died in 2011.