Delta Burke Opens Up About Her 30 Year Marriage & What Really Happened On Designing Women

In the late 1980s, Delta Burke seemed poised to take over the world. With each successive season on Designing Women, Delta Burke's star shone even brighter. However, within a few years, she found that everything she'd been building crashed around her. A combination of influences, most notably her husband, Gerald McRaney, would pull her off the track in the blink of an eye. Though she's managed to rebuild her life in the intervening years, she's finally speaking out about what really happened.

Delta Burke was catapulted into a career in show business in her teens, when she began competing in local beauty pageants near her hometown of Orlando, Florida. While Burke was clearly infatuated with being in the spotlight, she never realized just how detrimental the pressure of pageants, and subsequently, television, would be to her wellbeing. Later down the line, she'd have to face these burgeoning struggles, but she was lucky to have one person to see her through the darkness.

Being a pageant queen isn't easy for anyone, but though competitions have become more accepting in recent years, there's still an expectation that the girls and women who compete in these shows will fit a certain standard. For the young Delta, fitting into the pageants' expectations became an unhealthy obsession, which only set her up for the strife that would come after she'd hit the big time with Designing Women. Of course, Delta had no inkling about this back then, she just wanted to be a star.

When Designing Women first premiered in 1985, the creators were sure they had a hit on their hands, but the network wasn't so sure. Led by Delta Burke and Dixie Carter, the cast shone brightly in their roles, it just took them some time before they found the audience they were looking for. By the second season, however, the show was a bonafide hit, and suddenly, Delta Burke found that her name was on everybody's lips. The euphoria wouldn't last...

For nearly five years, Designing Women ran like a well-oiled machine. Each of the stars fit with the others like a glove until suddenly, it seemed like some sort of pipe burst. In the center of the mess was Delta, who started to publicly disparage the show. While it may have seemed like her comments sprang out of nowhere, it soon became clear to the public that she wouldn't be returning in the following seasons, but no one knew why.