The 1985 wedding of The Cosby Show star Phylicia Rashad and former pro football player Ahmad Rashad brought together some of that decade’s favourite American television stars and sports icons. At the time, the photograph capturing the Rashads surrounded by their wedding attendants would have been considered “impossibly glamorous,” Robert Weintraub wrote recently in the New York Times. Looking back from 2016, however, all that stands out is the striking presence of two now-notorious characters — O.J. Simpson and Bill Cosby.

Phylicia Rashad

Rashad played Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1992. Born Phylicia Ayers-Allen, she was nominated for an Emmy Award for the role in 1985, the year she married Ahmad. The couple wed at the Church of the Master in New York. Bill Cosby, the bride’s television husband, gave her away, according to a December 1985 issue of Jet magazine. The Rashads divorced in 2001. Phylicia has built a successful career as a stage actress. She has refused to comment on the sexual assault allegations against Cosby.

Bill Cosby

Cosby was at the height of his fame at the Rashad wedding, his downfall decades away. Dozens of allegations of sexual assault spanning his entire career began to surface in the mid-2000s, but his reputation didn’t suffer until comedian Hannibal Buress made a rape joke at his expense in 2014. Cosby has denied any wrongdoing. In recent years, reruns of The Cosby Show have been pulled from syndication and educational institutions have rescinded his honorary degrees. In May, a Pennsylvania judge ruled Cosby must stand trial on a 2004 sexual assault allegation by a Toronto woman.

Ahmad Rashad

Ahmad Rashad was an NFL wide receiver who spent most of his career with the Minnesota Vikings. He met O.J. Simpson in 1974, when Rashad played a season with the Buffalo Bills. After his football career ended in the early 1980s, Rashad became a sportscaster who worked mostly for NBC.He nervously proposed to Phylicia Ayers-Allen on Thanksgiving Day 1985 during a broadcast of a New York Jets–Detroit Lions game. “Either I will be the happiest person in the world or the biggest turkey on national television,” he said. She accepted. Rashad recently married for the fifth time.

O.J. Simpson

Simpson was a legend — a Heisman Trophy winner and NFL Hall of Famer — when he stood as best man for his former teammate. The following decade would not go so well. Though he was acquitted in the 1994 murders of his ex-wife and her friend, Simpson is now serving prison time for a 2007 Las Vegas hotel robbery.He made headlines again in 2016 with the release of the acclaimed TV series The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story and the five-part ESPN documentary O.J.: Made in America.

Debbie Allen

Allen, sister of the bride, is an actress best known for her performance and choreography in the musical drama television series Fame, which ran from 1982 to 1987 and earned her several Emmy nominations. She has had a recurring role on Grey’s Anatomy since 2011 and is also the show’s executive producer.

Rev. Eugene S. Callender

Callender was a celebrated civil rights advocate who in the 1960s attended marches in the South with Martin Luther King Jr. He lived and worked in Harlem, where according to the New York Times he was best known for creating “an innovative series of ‘street academies’ for disadvantaged New York City youths that became a model for non-traditional educational programs nationwide.” Callender served as pastor at the Church of the Master for decades. He died in 2013 at the age of 87.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Read more about: