Five Things That Happened On May 17 In Soap History

In 1979, Suzanne Rogers (Maggie, Days of Our Lives) won the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress. She recalled to Soap Opera Digest in 2018, "I was in shock! It was tremendous joy. I would say I was just so thankful and appreciative that I won it. I was up against four other wonderful actresses, one of which was Frances [Reid, Alice Horton]. Obviously, you sit there and you go, ‘God, why can’t we all win?’ I mean the fact that we were all in the category meant that we were good enough to be in the category but it doesn’t work out that way, and I just happened to be the lucky one that year."

In 1993, Eileen Davidson (pictured with Drake Hogestyn as John Black) made her Days of Our Lives debut as Kristen Blake, later known as Kristen DiMera. The actress had previously appeared as Ashley Abbott on Young and Restless and Kelly Capwell on Santa Barbara and would ultimately play a range of roles on the show, including Susan Banks and Thomas Banks. In 2015, she mused to Soap Opera Digest that being on DAYS "made me a better actress. I was able to open myself up creatively and do some really meaty stuff. Also, I enjoyed doing the comedy, which I don’t get to do that often. Plus, I met some very wonderful people who mean the world to me.”

In 2004, Ryan Lavery (Cameron Mathison) and Greenlee Smythe (Rebecca Budig) wed on All My Children — that is, after an interruption by Kendall Hart, who showed up in a wedding dress, determined to marry Ryan herself! Kendall locked Greenlee up in a turret, but Simone Torres freed her and after the dueling brides brawled in the pool, Ryan and Greenlee said, "I do."

In 2018 on General Hospital, Curtis Ashford (Donnell Turner) proposed to Jordan Ashford (Vinessa Antoine) at the Nurses’ Ball as part of his act (a magic show). "Baby, magic has already happened," he said. "We came back into each other's lives, and we found something miraculous. And I don't want to take that miracle for granted. Jordan Ashford, my queen, my light and my love, please believe in our magic. Marry me." She said yes.

In 2022, Mariah Copeland (Camryn Grimes, l.) and Tessa Porter (Cait Fairbanks) tied the knot in the first same-sex wedding in Young and Restless history. Grimes described the event to Soap Opera Digest as "a little surreal for me because I haven’t gotten married on the show before. I was really excited to see what they were going to pull together and how they would represent these two characters, and I must say, I wasn’t disappointed." "Everything is magical.” Fairbanks added, "It’s just a day for everybody to feel really, really happy — including the fans. There will be tears, but this is feel-good television, boys and girls!”