I went back to Broadway to do Pirates of Penzance. That’s where I met my wife, Karla DeVito, who played Mabel. We got married after I begged her for a year! And now we’ve been married for 43 ...

So how did the role come to be? Benson tells PEOPLE he just got lucky. "I got very lucky," says Benson, 69, who now lives in the Pacific Northwest with Karla DeVito, his actress wife of 43 years.