Robert Wagner & Natalie Wood

When Natalie Wood meet her future husband, she was a child actress who appeared in a number of movies including 1947's beloved Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street, was often out and about the studios, accompanied by her mother.It's at the 20th Century Fox, the distribution studio of Miracle on 34th Street, that Wood saw Wagner, eight years her senior, for the first time.

"I was 10 and he was 18 when I first saw him walking down the hall at 20th Century Fox," said Wood."I turned to my mother and said, 'I'm going to marry him.'"

As it was customary at the time for actors under contract with the same studio (20th Century Fox, in their case), Wood and Wagner were set up on an arranged date for publicity in 1956. At the time, they were 18 and 26 respectively.Despite the date being arranged by the studio, their mutual attraction was real and they quickly hit it off. A year later, Wood and Wagner got married after he proposed by placing a pearl-and-diamond ring in her champagne glass.

Their first wedding took place on December 28, 1957 in Scottsdale, Arizona, where Wagner's parents lived.As they were two stars of the studio system, their wedding was heavily publicized.

They got it wrong the first time around, though, and divorced in 1962.

Wood married British producer and theater agent Richard Gregson in 1969, with Redford attending as best man. The couple welcomed daughter Natasha (now known as Natasha Gregson Wagner) on Sept. 29, 1970.Meanwhile, Wagner married Marion Marshall, the mother of his daughter Kate, in 1963.

Wood and Wagner had seen each other occasionally since splitting up, but they reconnected at a dinner party that each attended alone in 1970. Wood was six months pregnant with Natasha. Wagner was newly separated.He trailed Wood home in his car to make sure she got back safely, after which they sat together and she asked if he was happy. "And he said, 'I'm happy you're having a baby,'" she recalled, per Harris' book. He sent flowers the next day.

In the summer of 1971, Wood and Gregson amicably separated. She and Wagner started talking on the phone regularly and then he invited her to his home in Palm Desert, Calif., in January 1972.And that was that. They pleasantly shocked the world by attending the Oscars together that April, after which they flew to New York and hopped on the Queen Elizabeth 2 to sail to England.

As fate would have it, their passage was delayed a few days due to a violent storm in the Atlantic, one that had both of them thinking that their happy reunion might end up being awfully short. Because there was no internet then, reporters awaiting the late ship were stunned to see Wagner and Wood debark together.

"Timing is everything in life," Wagner told a reporter, not bothering to clarify that he and Wood did not meet by chance on the ship. "It just happened, and as a result we've been very happy and had a lovable, enjoyable time, despite the freak storm."Asked if they would be getting remarried, the actor said probably, but not anytime soon. He later recalled that he was broke at the time, shelling out money for his divorce, getting sued over a business deal gone wrong and having issues with the IRS. But Wood was flush and didn't want to wait.

They married each other again three months later, on July 16, 1972. Only a few friends and family members, including their respective daughters, were in attendance at the ceremony, which took place aboard a 55-foot yacht called the Ramblin' Rose, anchored off of Malibu's Paradise Cove.Wood reflected on their second go-round, "When R.J. and I were married [the first time] we were like two children acting out a studio script. We deliberately hid our weaknesses from each other. Now we found that we could really talk to each other. We were not afraid to be ourselves. But we realized that we needed those years apart to reach that understanding."

This time they settled in for the long haul, setting up house in Beverly Hills with his-and-hers Mercedes and welcoming daughter Courtney Wagner in 1974.In 1976, Wood considered herself partially retired. "Work doesn't play the same role in my life it used to," said the three-time Oscar nominee. "If a woman decides to get married and have children, other parts of her life are just going to have to be put aside." She also said at the time that she and Wagner wanted one more child.

On November 29, 1981, that tragedy happened.Natalie Wood went missing from the yacht she shared with her husband, Robert Wagner—only to be found approximately six hours later, floating facedown in the Pacific Ocean near Santa Catalina Island.Authorities classified her death as an accident, concluding the 43-year-old star of “West Side Story,” who couldn’t swim, had been drinking the night before she was found floating.

Hours before her death, authorities said, the three actors had had dinner at Doug’s Harbor Reef restaurant in Two Harbors and then returned to the yacht, called the Splendour, where they drank and an argument ensued between Walken and Wagner. According to the new report, Wood went missing about midnight, and an analysis of her stomach contents placed her death around that time. The report said Wagner placed a radio call to report her missing at 1:30 a.m.Roger Smith, the L.A. County rescue boat captain who helped pull Wood’s body from the water, said he did not receive a call to look for her until after 5 a.m.An autopsy determined that Wood had consumed seven or eight glasses of wine before she died. There were some fresh bruises on her legs and arms and an abrasion on her left cheek that could be synonymous with a fall.

"It's always with you," Wagner told a journalist in December 2017. "When Natalie died I thought my life was over. Natalie was such a special, wonderful woman."When the case was re-opened in 2011, Wagner stated that he fully supported any legitimate efforts to get answers.

Some movies they filmed together: Cat on A Hot Tin Roof (1958) , All The Fine Young Cannibals (1960) , The Affair (1973)