Roy Thorsen: Everything to Know About Margaret O’Brien’s Husband

Roy Thorsen is best known as the second husband of Margaret O’Brien, one of the most loved child stars of old Hollywood. While his wife spent her life in front of cameras, Roy Thorsen chose a very different path. He worked in business, stayed away from film sets, and kept his family life quiet even after he married a famous actress.

Many people search for roy thorsen because they want to know who stood beside Margaret O’Brien for more than four decades. Their marriage lasted from 1974 until his death in 2018, and it gave O’Brien her only child. This article looks at what is publicly documented about his life, his work, his marriage, and his family, and it also notes the points that remain unconfirmed.

Quick Facts

Who Was Roy Thorsen?

Roy Thorvald Thorsen was an American businessman who became known to the public only through his marriage. He was not an actor, he did not work in films, and he did not try to build a public name of his own. That choice is a big part of his story. In Hollywood, many partners of famous stars seek attention. Thorsen did the opposite.

Public profiles based on his IMDb listing give his birth date as November 13, 1930, and his birthplace as Brooklyn, New York. Some family tree records link his father, Thorvald Thorsen, to Norway, which would fit the family name. That detail about his father’s origin is reported in genealogy records, but it is not widely covered in major news sources, so it should be read as reported rather than fully confirmed.

What is clear is that Thorsen built his adult life in business rather than entertainment. Several biographies of Margaret O’Brien describe him simply and consistently as a steel industry executive. None of those sources names a single company as his long term employer in a way that can be checked easily, so this article does not name an employer. Inventing a company name would be wrong when the public record is this thin.

Early Life and Background

Very little has been published about Roy Thorsen’s childhood, school years, or early work. He grew up in the United States during the Great Depression and the Second World War years, a time that shaped many men of his generation. Beyond that broad context, the honest answer is that his early life is not well documented in public sources.

This lack of detail is common for people who were private citizens before they married someone famous. Newspapers covered Margaret O’Brien from the age of four. They did not cover her future husband at all while he was young. As a result, readers will find many websites that copy the same few lines about him, birth date, birthplace, job, marriage, and child, and very little else.

It is also why some details differ slightly from site to site. For example, some pages give the wedding date as June 8, 1974, while others give June 6, 1974. The year, 1974, is consistent across reliable listings, including Wikipedia’s entry on Margaret O’Brien, which records the marriage as lasting from 1974 until his death in 2018. The exact day in June is less certain in the sources available, and this article marks that exact day as unconfirmed.

Margaret O’Brien Before Roy Thorsen

To understand the marriage, it helps to know who Margaret O’Brien was when they met. Born Angela Maxine O’Brien on January 15, 1937, in San Diego, California, she started acting for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at age four. She took her professional first name from her first credited role in the film Journey for Margaret in 1942.

Her performance as Tootie in Meet Me in St. Louis in 1944 made her one of the best known child actresses in the world, and she received a Juvenile Academy Award as the outstanding child actress of that year. She later appeared in films such as The Canterville Ghost, Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, The Secret Garden, and Little Women. She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for film and one for television, both awarded in February 1960.

O’Brien was married once before she met Thorsen. She married Harold Allen Jr. on August 9, 1959. That marriage ended in divorce in 1968, and there were no children from it. By the early 1970s, she was working mainly on stage and television and in public appearances, a calmer phase of a career that had started in childhood.

Marriage to Margaret O’Brien

Roy Thorsen and Margaret O’Brien married in 1974. Some secondary sources say they had dated for about a year before the wedding, but that detail comes from dating databases rather than from a major interview, so it is best treated as reported and unconfirmed. What is not in doubt is the length and stability of the marriage that followed.

At a time when Hollywood marriages were often short, theirs lasted about 44 years. Photographs from public events over the years show them together at award shows and charity and film events in California, including events in Beverly Hills in the late 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s. In those pictures, Thorsen is present and supportive, but he is never presented as a performer. He was there as her husband, not as part of the show.

The couple’s only child, their daughter Mara Tolene Thorsen, was born in 1977. Some sources give her exact birth date as July 12, 1976, and others place her birth in 1977. Wikipedia and most biographies of O’Brien use 1977, and that is the year used here, with the exact date marked as varying between sources. Mara is O’Brien’s only child, which makes this family of three the center of Thorsen’s public story.

Later in their life together, O’Brien also served from 1979 as a civilian aide to the Secretary of the Army for Southern California, and she continued to appear at events that honored classic Hollywood. Through all of that, Thorsen remained in the background. There are no well known interviews in which he discusses his wife’s fame at length, and no book or film project attached to his name.

A Private Life Away From Hollywood

Privacy seems to have been a shared value in the Thorsen home. Margaret O’Brien had lived a very public childhood, including a famous and painful episode in which her Juvenile Oscar was stolen in 1954 and was not returned until 1995, when two collectors found it at a swap meet and gave it back. An adult life with a husband outside the film industry may have offered a balance that she did not have as a child star.

Thorsen’s work in the steel industry also placed him in a world with its own rules, far from studio publicity. Steel executives in that period worked in sales, plants, and corporate offices, not on red carpets. Because no detailed work history has been published, this article does not guess at his titles, income, or net worth. No reliable source publishes a verified net worth figure for Roy Thorsen, so none is given here.

That restraint matters. Many low quality biography sites fill gaps with numbers that have no source. For a man who kept his finances and his work private for his whole life, the respectful and accurate choice is to say plainly that those figures are not publicly documented.

His death in 2018 ended the marriage. Wikipedia records the marriage as ending with his death that year, and a family tree record gives the date as June 4, 2018. No major news obituary for Thorsen alone appears in the sources checked for this article, which again reflects how private he remained, even at the end of a long marriage to a famous woman.

Why People Still Ask About Roy Thorsen

Interest in Roy Thorsen comes almost entirely from lasting interest in Margaret O’Brien herself. She is one of the last surviving stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and fans who discover her films often work through her life story in order, first marriage, second marriage, and daughter. Thorsen is the longest chapter in that personal story.

His story also stands out because it is so unlike the usual Hollywood partner story. There was no acting career launched from the marriage, no public feud, and no divorce. Instead, there was a long marriage, one child, a business career kept separate from films, and very few words said to the press. For many readers, that quiet record is exactly what makes him interesting.

At the same time, readers should be careful with websites that claim to know much more than this. If a site lists detailed school names, exact salaries, or long quotes from Thorsen, it is worth asking where that information came from. In the sources checked here, those details were not supported by strong records.

FAQs

Who was Roy Thorsen?

Roy Thorvald Thorsen was an American steel industry executive who was married to actress Margaret O’Brien from 1974 until his death in 2018. He is known to the public mainly through that marriage.

When did Roy Thorsen and Margaret O’Brien get married?

They married in 1974. Some secondary sources give a June date, but the exact day is reported differently across sources and is treated here as unconfirmed. Their marriage lasted until his death in 2018.

Did Roy Thorsen and Margaret O’Brien have children?

Yes. They had one daughter, Mara Tolene Thorsen, born in 1977 according to most biographies of O’Brien. She is Margaret O’Brien’s only child.

What did Roy Thorsen do for a living?

He worked as an executive in the steel industry. No single employer or detailed job history is confirmed in the reliable public sources checked for this article, and no verified net worth figure has been published for him.

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Final Thoughts

Roy Thorsen lived most of his life outside the spotlight, and even after marrying one of Hollywood’s most famous child stars, he stayed there. The documented facts are simple and steady: a birth in Brooklyn in 1930, a career in the steel business, a marriage in 1974 that lasted until his death in 2018, and a daughter who completed their small family.

That simple record may be the best way to remember him. He did not try to borrow his wife’s fame, and he did not turn their private life into publicity. In a town built on attention, Roy Thorsen chose a quieter role, husband, father, and businessman, and he kept that role for more than forty years.

Featured photo: Margaret O’Brien – public domain photo, via Wikimedia Commons