Days of our Lives will mark 40 years since Mary Beth Evans joined the show as Kayla Brady Johnson with a walk down memory lane on Friday, May 22.
In a flashback-filled episode, the love story of Kayla and Steve Johnson — played by Stephen Nichols — will be revisited. For Evans, the opportunity to reflect on the path her life has taken since she and Nichols were first paired four decades ago was especially meaningful.
“I feel so lucky because it really gave me such a beautiful life,” Evans says. “I think about the connection that Stephen and I had from the beginning, and what a beautiful love story was written. They don’t make supercouples like that anymore. Back then, if they saw the spark and that it worked, they really ran with it. I was lucky to be paired with him.”
NBC/Courtesy Everett Collection
That she would still be playing Kayla all these years later is something Evans never could have imagined. When she joined the soap in 1986, she was simply hoping to land steady work as an actress.
“I had been doing other things, like guest episodics and whatever was going on at the time, like Knight Rider,” she recalls. “At the time, my husband was a resident, so he didn’t make very much money. We bought a house, and I hadn’t been getting jobs for, like, six months. I put in an application for a restaurant job, and then I had this audition for Days of Our Lives. I said to my husband, ‘I’m just gonna try to stall picking up that uniform until I hear about this Days of Our Lives job.’ And obviously, it changed our lives.”
Even after booking the role, the idea of a long-term commitment initially felt overwhelming. “It was a three-year contract, which they don’t do anymore, but it just seemed like, ‘Oh, my God, that is such a long time,’” she recalls. ‘And then you end up doing 40 years, and you don’t even know how that happened.”
Looking back on her early days in Salem, Evans is still struck by how deeply Kayla’s pairing with Steve resonated with viewers. “He was a bad boy, but he had a big heart, and that’s why the coupling worked,” she notes. “They’re good people, nice people. He’s crying all the time and has such a big heart. Kayla saw the good in him when other people didn’t, and what woman wouldn’t want to have a guy look at her like that and see her truly and honestly?”
While the couple’s romance became iconic, Evans says some of her favorite material centered on other relationships. “I love the family stories because I think that’s really where Steven’s and my hearts are in real life, too,” she observes. “We really love family. When Peter Reckell [Bo Brady] was here, I loved doing scenes with him as my brother. When Kayla’s mother Caroline had dementia [in 2012], that was painfully heartbreaking, beautiful stuff to play with [her late portrayer] Peggy McCay, who was amazing. I would rather be in a heartfelt family story than a caper, or something that’s not based in reality, any day of the week.”
NBC/Courtesy Everett Collection
Among the standout Steve and Kayla storylines, one remains particularly memorable for Evans: the beloved Emily and Gideon arc from 1989, in which the pair discovered a Civil War-era diary and reenacted the romance within its pages. “That was a cool thing because it let them have this love story all over again,” she explains. “It was pretty fun to wear costumes and go do a period piece, and then we went to Charleston [South Carolina]. Nobody ever went on location, and just to play all that and be immersed in that was really great.”
Of course, the Johnsons have endured their share of hardships over the years. “We’ve certainly had challenging times,” Evans allows. “I mean, when Stephen came back to the show in 2006, and Steve didn’t have his memory, and we were trying to get him to remember was pretty challenging. The deaf storyline [in 1988, when Kayla lost her hearing] was super challenging because we had to learn everything in sign language, which neither one of us knew anything about. But that changed our life, too, because then we started doing a lot of fundraisers and things for that.”
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Today, Evans enjoys the fact that Steve and Kayla represent something increasingly rare in daytime. “It’s nice to be able to play a happy marriage,” she points out. “It doesn’t have to be you’re getting shot at or cheating. For anyone who’s been married a long time, they know there are other conflicts and knots to untie. Now, when we have little snippets, I try to show that they’re still in a loving, sexy relationship. That part’s actually really cool, to be able to keep that going as we get older, to make it that it’s so normal and should be.”
Evans adds that she’s always touched to hear from fans who were named Kayla or named their daughter Kayla after her character. “My husband’s a doctor, my daughter’s an orthodontist, and they have people come in all the time with that name,” she muses. “And they’ll say, ‘How did you get that name?’ And it’s always, ‘My mom watched a soap opera.’ But there was this one woman whose mother was a big Kayla fan and Patch and Kayla fan, and the mom was out of state. When her mom came in, my husband said, ‘You gotta come in and say hi to her,’ and I did. She had my same haircut, and it was really cute.”
Everett Collection
As she reflects on the role that has defined much of her career, Evans says she never loses sight of how fortunate she’s been. “I’m grateful every day,” she says. “I don’t ever take it for granted. I’m just thankful to be in this position and come here. Today, there were 22 scenes before I had to go back on, so Stephen and I just sat on another set watching the scenes. You get that perspective with the cameras and the booms, and it’s just a pretty cool thing that we get to do this.”
Four decades after first arriving in Salem, Evans is especially thankful for the loyal fans who have supported Steve and Kayla through every chapter of their story. “I appreciate that they’ve gone on this journey with us,” she shares. “It’s been a long time, but I hope that we inspire people to have healthy, good, heartfelt, and honest relationships. That’s what I’m always striving for here.”
Days of our Lives, Weekdays, Peacock
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