Jo's best friends were STU BERGMAN ( Larry Haines) and MARGE BERGMAN (Melba Rae) appeared in December 1951, a good-natured, sympathetic couple who always knew how to laugh, even when the going got rough. Marge and Stu spent many hours in Jo's kitchen, having coffee with her and talking over personal problems. Priceless friends, they were always around when Jo needed them. They had two young children: JANET (Ellen Spencer 1955 - 1956 and Sandy Robinson 1956 - 1961) and JIMMY BERGMAN (Peter Lazar).

Jo and Arthur, in ten years of courtship and marriage, certainly endured enough crises to last any other couple a lifetime. On the day of their wedding, for instance, a mysterious woman named 'HAZEL' (Mary Patton) came to Joanne Barron's Motor Heaven- which Jo and Arthur had bought and were running as a business well before they were married - and claimed to be his wife. In truth, this woman looked exactly like the woman Arthur had once been married to, but he thought she had been killed in a fire many years before. Of course, this wasn't Hazel Tate at all, but rather her twin sister, SUE. She had been hired by the local Syndicate to upset Jo and Arthur's marriage plans so that they could gain control of the Motor Haven, to use as a front for a dope-peddling operation. MORTIMER HIGBEE ( Ian Martin) , the head of the syndicate, had found Sue and wanted to use her to foil the marriage and use her influence on Arthur to get him to sell the property.

Jo and Arthur were stymied by Hazel's apparent return from the dead, until Nathan Walsh discovered her true identity. To trick her into admitting the truth, Arthur, Jo, and Nathan faked a fire and hired an actress to impersonate the dead twin sister, Hazel. Distraught on 'seeing' her dead sister, Sue, in a drunken frenzy, rushed out into the woods, where she was later found dying by Joanne. The D.A.( Les Damon) immediately accused Joanne of the murder, and she might have stood trial if Arthur and Nathan hadn't discovered the identity of the real KILLER (Frank Campanella). In the process of finding the killer, however, Arthur was shot in the heart and nearly killed. For a long time, he was invalid. Depressed that in his condition he couldn't be a real husband to Joanne, he refused to go ahead with their original wedding plans.

To win Jo and Arthur's friendship, Rose pretended to need help with her mute brother, WILBUR PETERSON( Don Knotts). Soon she and Wilbur were staying at the Motor Haven as guests of the people she was supposed to destroy. One day Rose poisoned the soup that Jo would be serving to a group of workers, but at the last moment she couldn't go through with the horrible deed and poured the soup down the drain. Eventually, psychiatry proved that Wilbur had become mute as a reaction to the shock he'd endured many years before after almost killing their foster father, who had tried to sexually molest Rose. When Wilbur was made to realize why he became mute, he suddenly found his voice again. The happy brother and sister then left Henderson.

Joanne finally convinced Arthur to marry her despite the complications caused by the gunshot wound. Joanne proposed marriage and they wed on June 9, 1955.

After the wedding, Arthur decided he wanted to expand the Motor Haven, although Joanne was satisfied with what they had. Arthur took a thirty-day call loan from bankers who were actually the men responsible for Hazel's murder. When the pressure to pay off the loan came through, Arthur turned to his wealthy Aunt CORNELIA SIMMONS (Doris Dalton), who lived in Puerto Rico. Upon moving to Henderson, she began taking over Arthur's affairs, and felt if Joanne didn't like it, she could leave. Cornelia, like Jo's previou in-laws, became Jo's enemy. Aunt Cornelia would have liked nothing better than a permanent separation between Jo and Arthur.

At this time, also, Joanne became pregnant, and a boy, DUNCAN ERIC, was born. A holding company was set up in Henderson, called Tate Enterprises, and Arthur was established as its head, although Aunt Cornelia actually ran the corporation.

Eunice was highly neurotic, unstable, selfish and jealous of Joanne and had become a widow before she was 25. Attracted to Arthur, and because he was feeling the pressures of business, Eunice and Arthur had an affair. When Eunice realized her affair was not a happy one, she turned to Nathan Walsh, who was still in love with Joanne himself. But Nathan soon found Eunice attractive and wanted to marry her.

After refusing Nathan Walsh's proposal, Eunice felt she was the cause of his drowning. But when he showed up six weeks later, very much alive, she had a fit of insanity and suffered pangs of guilt and told Joanne the whole story. Taking this turn of events as an opportunity to separate Joanne and Arthur forever, Aunt Cornelia offered Arthur a job in Puerto Rico, where she had most of her business interests. Torn by shame because of his unfaithfulness to Jo, Arthur accepted the offer. With only the money from Motor Haven to support her and her daughter, Joanne once again took a job at Henderson Hospital.

While Arthur was away, Jo's father who had been managing the Motor Haven in Arthur's absence, fell in love with Stu Bergman's widowed mother, MRS BERGMAN (Joanna Ross), and they were married, thus making Jo and Stu sort of relatives.

Best friends Janet Bergman and Patti Tate, by now in their late teens, were having adult problems of their own. Janet fell in love with BUDD GARDNER (George Maharis and Tony Ray), Jo's nephew. They were married and had a son, CHUCK.