Todd Bridges, the actor best known for playing Willis Jackson on the NBC sitcom Diff’rent Strokes, has filed for divorce from his wife Bettijo B. Hirschi, court records confirmed this week.
Bridges, 60, submitted a Petition for Dissolution of Marriage Without Minor Children in Maricopa County, Arizona on March 31, 2026, less than three months after publicly announcing the separation in January.
The filing describes the marriage as “irretrievably broken.” Neither party is seeking spousal support, there is no community property or shared debt to divide, and both are representing themselves. All remaining terms have been settled by mutual agreement outside of court.
Us Weekly was first to report the filing.
How Did The Couple Meet?
The origin story of the relationship is genuinely charming and a little absurd, which fits Todd Bridges. In January 2022, a friend of Bettijo Hirschi’s created a dating app profile on her behalf, ostensibly for “market research,” and showed it to Bridges.
He was apparently sufficiently impressed that the market research led somewhere real.
They began dating, Bridges proposed by the ocean approximately six months later, and they married on September 21, 2022 at Greystone Mansion and Gardens in Beverly Hills, a low-key ceremony with roughly 70 guests.
Nine months from first contact to marriage. By any measure, a fast timeline.
Hirschi, a photographer and designer, brought four children from a previous marriage into the relationship. Rockwell, Modette, Attalie Anne, and Piper.
Bridges brought his two adult children, son Spencir, 28, and daughter Bo, 29, from his first marriage to Dori Bridges, which lasted from 1998 to 2012.
During their time together, the blended family also launched the DANG! podcast in 2024, covering relationships, family, mental health, and addiction.
Bridges announced the separation on January 14, 2026. “After much prayer and reflection, my spouse and I have made the difficult decision to separate,” he wrote. “This was not an easy choice, and it comes with a heavy heart, but also with love and gratitude for the life we shared. I thank God for the time we’ve had together, the lessons we’ve learned, and the family we’ve built. Even in this season of change, I trust He is guiding us both toward healing, peace, and new beginnings.”
This is his second divorce.
Who Is Todd Bridges?
If you are under a certain age, Todd Bridges may be a name you recognize without being entirely sure why.
If you grew up in the late 1970s or 1980s, he is Willis Jackson, and Willis Jackson is as embedded in the furniture of American television as any character from that era.
Diff’rent Strokes debuted on NBC on November 3, 1978. The premise was a social experiment dressed as a sitcom. Two Black children from Harlem, Willis and his younger brother Arnold, are taken in by a wealthy white Manhattan businessman named Philip Drummond after the death of their mother, his housekeeper.
Bridges played Willis, the older, more skeptical, more street-smart of the two brothers, opposite Gary Coleman’s Arnold, whose catchphrase “Whatchu talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” became one of the most quoted lines in television history.
Conrad Bain played Drummond. Dana Plato played his daughter Kimberly. Charlotte Rae played the housekeeper Mrs. Garrett.
The show ran for eight seasons, from 1978 to 1986, and for the length of its run it was genuinely groundbreaking, one of the first American network sitcoms to address child molestation, drug use, racism, and poverty in a primetime family format.
First Lady Nancy Reagan appeared in a 1983 episode as part of her “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign, filming a segment about drugs being sold at a school.
The irony of that cameo, given what was already happening in Todd Bridges’ personal life, and what was about to happen, is one of the more jarring footnotes in television history.
Bridges was already being sexually molested at twelve years old by his publicist. His father was physically abusive.
Conrad Bain, his television father, was by his own account the closest thing he had to a caring father figure during those years.
When Diff’rent Strokes ended in 1986, Bridges was twenty years old and typecasted beyond recovery. The roles stopped coming.
Within two years he was living in South Central Los Angeles with no shoes, no shirt, and no money, and had begun using crack cocaine and methamphetamine. He dealt drugs to support his addiction.
He carried weapons. In 1989 he was charged with the attempted murder of a drug dealer named Kenneth “Tex” Clay, who prosecutors argued had been shot by Bridges during a cocaine binge.
Bridges was defended by Johnnie Cochran, who argued his client was an abused minor who had been exploited by the entertainment industry and was being framed.
A witness eventually testified that Bridges had not been present at the shooting. He was acquitted.
There were other arrests. A concealed firearm charge in 2002. A bomb threat charge in 2006, for which he received a suspended sentence after pleading no contest.
Through it all, he has described a moment in the early 1990s when Burbank police pulled him over and he considered provoking them into shooting him because he could not find another way out.
He did not do it. He got sober instead.
Bridges has now been in recovery for approximately thirty years, a milestone he has celebrated publicly.
In the years since, he has rebuilt his career with recurring roles on Everybody Hates Chris and a long stint as a commentator on truTV’s World’s Dumbest. He published a memoir in 2010 called Killing Willis: From Diff’rent Strokes to the Mean Streets to the Life I Always Wanted, which detailed his addiction, the abuse he suffered as a child, and his return to faith.
He founded the Society for Ethical Addiction Treatment, a nonprofit aimed at improving how the addiction treatment industry operates and closing the gap between research and actual care.
Of the three child stars at the center of Diff’rent Strokes, Todd Bridges is the only one still alive.
Gary Coleman died in 2010 at thirty-two from a brain hemorrhage following a fall. Dana Plato, who introduced Bridges to marijuana as teenagers, died of a prescription drug overdose in 1999 at thirty-four.
Where Do Things Currently Stand?
The divorce filing is clean and uncontested. No property disputes, no support requests, no children in common.
Given the absence of any outstanding disagreements, the proceedings are expected to move to resolution quickly.
Bridges and Hirschi had three years together, a blended family of six children between them, a podcast, and a wedding at a Beverly Hills mansion that started with a dating app profile created as a joke.
It did not work out. That happens. What is notable about Todd Bridges is not that his second marriage is ending but that he is still here, still standing, still the only one from his era of Diff’rent Strokes who gets to have a second marriage to end.
