Carol Serling, the actress and wife of “The Twilight Zone” star Rod Serling, has died at the age of 91, her daughter Anne confirmed in a Twitter post.
Anne Serling said in her January 13 post, “I am saddened to announce my mother Carol Serling has passed away. She lived to be 91. She married my dad, Rod Serling, in 1948. A marriage that lasted until his death in 1975. She was with him throughout his early and extended career and will be missed.”
Carol and CEO Michael Eisner during the grand opening of The Twilight Zone Tower of Power ride at Disney’s California Adventure theme park on May 5, 2004 in Anaheim, California.
The couple met while they were both students at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. At the time, Carol was known as Carolyn Kramer. They married in July 1948 after Rod had converted to the Unitarian Church. The pair would go on to have two daughters, Jodi, born in 1950, and Anne, born in 1955. Carol said in a 1987 interview when asked about how she met Rod, “He was one of that large group of returning veterans right after the second World War. It was the fall of ’46. I was a freshman. I was seventeen and Rod was twenty-one. We were married two years later, at the end of our second year.” Carol added that at the time, she and Rod spent time living in a trailer on Antioch’s campus.
Rod Serling died in Rochester, New York, in June 1975 at the age of 50 after he suffered a heart attack. The Associated Press report on his death says that Serling and his wife had been living in Interlaken, New York. Rod had been a teacher at Ithaca College between 1967 and 1975. Carol had been an Ithaca College trustee. According to the school’s website, over the years, Carol had donated many of her late husband’s works for display on campus. The Rod Serling Archives at Ithaca College, are the largest single collection of his television scripts and screenplays. In addition, Serling’s six Emmy Awards are also on display.
According to Carol Serling’s IMDb page, she is credited as being a project consultant and as an extra in the 1983 “Twilight Zone: The Movie.” Carol is also credited as an executive producer on the 2019 reboot of “The Twilight Zone.”
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