Melissa Gilbert thinks it was "inevitable" that she would marry Timothy Busfield

She told People: "It sounds cliché to say it, but it really was like getting hit with a thunderbolt. It just seemed right and inevitable. ... The next morning when I woke up, my first thought was, 'I'm going to marry him,' and I then my next thought was, 'You're a crazy person

"Then I thought, 'Well, why don't we start with brunch?' and I grabbed my phone, and I went to text him to ask if he wanted to meet. He texted me [at the same time] and asked if I wanted to meet for brunch.

"That's when I thought, 'Maybe I'm not so crazy. Maybe this is right.' We met for brunch, and I knew ... It just made sense.."

The 'Diary of Anne Frank' actress also noted that this marriage has been the "easiest relationship" she has ever had because by the time she was in her late forties, she knew what she "didn't want" in life.

She said: "There is rarely drama, and if there is drama, it's not caused by us. It comes from outside, and we handle it in a much different way.

"By the time you get to be the age we were when we met, you know what you don't want. Even more than you know what you do, you know what you will not put up with ever again and that changes everything.

"I was never again going to be with someone with whom I did not agree politically. I wasn't going to bend myself to be quiet because their opinion needed to be louder and different."