Henry Winkler has been married to his wife, Stacey, for nearly five decades, so at this point, she knows him pretty well.
Including, apparently, when he’s exaggerating about the size of his… fish.
The “Happy Days” star and his wife joined Graham Bensinger for an interview recently, where the couple talked about their marriage, how they met and the one activity that somehow transforms Winkler from one of the nicest guys in Hollywood into a fiercely competitive rule-breaker.
Fly-fishing.
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According to Stacey, her husband might also be padding the stats a little bit.
“You have alleged before that he pads his numbers,” Bensinger said.
Winkler immediately looked offended.
“Wait a minute. Really?” he asked.
Stacey didn’t back down.
“I write down in my book exactly,” Winkler protested. “I don’t round off. That I do only in charity.”
That set his wife up perfectly.
“The biggest charity is your fish size,” Stacey fired back. “You are about your fish size the way other people are about… other sizes.”
Ouch.
After 48 years of marriage, Winkler seemed stunned to learn that his own wife apparently doesn’t trust his measurements.
“I have just learned something I’ve never known,” he said. “I don’t pad my numbers, but my wife believes I pad my numbers. Shocking. I’m shocked. I’m hurt.”
Who among us hasn’t exaggerated a little after a fishing trip?
But the (alleged) fish inflation isn’t even their biggest problem on the water.
The couple used to fish together, but that arrangement apparently became unsustainable because Henry — otherwise known for being an exceptionally pleasant human being — becomes an entirely different person once there’s a trout involved.
He explained that they once had clearly defined territory while sharing a boat. Stacey got the water from the front of the boat back to the oars. Henry got everything behind the oars.
Simple enough.
Except Henry didn’t particularly care for that arrangement whenever Stacey’s side looked more promising.
“I’m here to catch a fish,” he explained. “And sometimes her water on the other side of the oar looks really fishy.”
So his fly would occasionally “wind up” in Stacey’s section.
“Not wind up,” she argued. “Slap into my water.”
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Winkler insists he’s simply following the fish. Stacey says her normally reasonable husband suddenly loses all regard for rules, boundaries and marital harmony the moment he picks up a fly rod.
“There was just no way because he’s too crazy,” she said of fishing together. “He is this reasonable man who turns into a 7-year-old.”
In fact, the couple said their first fly-fishing experience together generated more arguments than all their previous years of marriage combined.
“She just didn’t understand,” Henry explained.
Stacey was unimpressed.
“So then what I would do would be to not catch fish to make you feel better?” she asked.
“That would have been so thoughtful,” he deadpanned.
Eventually, the Winklers found the secret to a happy fishing marriage: Don’t fish together. Now they take separate boats, separate guides and even fish different parts of the river.
Problem solved! Well, mostly.
Because Stacey still has one surefire way to get under her husband’s skin.
When she catches a big fish, she sends him a photo.
“He gets irritated,” she said.
“I do not get irritated,” Winkler insisted.
He just desperately wants to know how she keeps doing it.
“I really think that there is something about female pheromones that attract the fish,” he joked, marveling at how quickly his wife seems to hook monsters.
He even floated another possibility: “Unless on the boat she can Photoshop.”
Stacey, meanwhile, says fly-fishing is one of the only areas of her husband’s life where the famously nice, mild-mannered actor gets genuinely reckless.
“If you are fishing somewhere in your area and Henry thinks he sees some bubbles or whatever, he’s going there,” she said. “So, there is nothing sacred.”
Maybe not.
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But after 48 years together, the Winklers have clearly figured out the important stuff.
Separate boats. Separate fishing territory.
And never, ever trust your husband’s estimate of how many inches that fish actually was.
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