Following two short-lived marriages, White found true love with game show host Allen Ludden, whom she met while appearing as a guest on Password during the show's third week. "We felt like we knew each other," she told the Archive of American Television. After White refused several of Ludden's marriage proposals, he finally took to wearing an engagement ring around his neck until she accepted, and they wed on June 14, 1963. "I came to the point of regretting that year that I said no," she said of her "love affair" with her husband, who died just shy of their 18th anniversary in 1981.