JERRY STILLER, ANNE MEARA Improvisation, on stage and off, served couple well

Stiller and Meara got their big break on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' in 1962.
NEW YORK (AP) -- After 50 years of marriage, with both careers still going strong, Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller remain each other's biggest fan.
"He's an amazing guy! The audience loves him," says Meara, meaning Stiller as the raucous father-in-law on the hit sitcom "King of Queens" (airing at 9 tonight on CBS).
"Yeah, whatever," murmurs Stiller, who moments later is singing Meara's praises as a comedian, first evidenced, he says, a half-century ago when the aspiring actress instantly got the hang of the improv group she and Stiller had joined.
"Anne, who had never broken the 'fourth wall' [dividing performer from audience] before, became the star of the company," says Stiller.
All the more remarkable: "When we started dating," Meara says, "I was down on comedians. Growing up, I loved drama and fantasies. I hated the Marx Brothers. I took all that confusion seriously."
Entertaining couple
Lunching with a reporter at a swank restaurant near their Upper West Side home, they exhibit a warm, if often kidding, give-and-take -- and an aversion to putting on airs.
Ordering red snapper, Meara asks the waitress, "If I don't finish it, can I take it home?"
And Stiller, who strikes a sharp contrast to his blustery TV persona, sips a glass of chardonnay, which he pronounces "very good."
"It's my way of being loose," he explains with a grin, insisting wine at midday "is all new to me. Soon you will be left with a guy falling into his omelet."
"You ordered an omelet?" Meara asks.
Stiller suddenly looks mystified. "I can't remember."
At 76, Stiller has reached a career summit after seven years as Arthur and, before that, five seasons playing hopped-up Frank Costanza on "Seinfeld."
Meanwhile, viewers have enjoyed Meara's guest appearances on "Sex and the City" (including the finale, now re-airing on HBO) as Miranda's eccentric mother-in-law, and on "King of Queens," where she returns this week.
Comedic exchange
Playing Veronica, the mother of a pal of Doug (series star Kevin James), she agrees to buy the burial plot adjoining Arthur's. But then he hastily reneges when the long-ago beauty queen with whom he's smitten emerges as a prospect.
"When you're dead," Veronica protests, "what difference does it make who you're next to?"
"Open your ears!" bellows Arthur. "She was Miss Yonkers!"
Performing this comedic graveyard scene, Ann and Jerry have come far -- she, the Irish-Catholic girl from Long Island; he, the Jewish kid from Manhattan's Lower East Side who was two years older but 4 inches shorter.
In their respective families, "nobody was thrilled when we got married, absolutely nobody," says Meara, who then, with a virtuoso's timing, allows, "Nobody sat shiva."
"We didn't look like people who should've been together," Stiller says. "People would never believe we were married. Even when we checked into a hotel, we got suspicious looks."
Worse, they were scarcely getting any looks from casting agents as they chased after roles.
Then Stiller crashed Shakespearean theater -- barely.
"I was playing bumpkins, jesters," Stiller recalls. "In 'Coriolanus,' I was a Volscian Guard with Jack Klugman and [future director] Gene Zaks. I got $55 a week.
On to improv
"Shakespeare started to disappear in my thinking. Then this idea came along: improvisational theater. No script! You make it up! I said to Anne, 'We got to do this sort of thing!"'
That was the 1950s Beat Generation, an edgy, innovative arts scene emerging in Chicago and St. Louis (where the couple performed in improv groups) and based, of course, in Greenwich Village.
"In those days," says Meara, "we lived in the Village. But we thought that when the Village was REALLY happening was in the '20s, the F. Scott Fitzgerald days, before our time. Now, the era WE were in is the time people talk about.
"But people never know what's going on while it's happening," she observes. "You think during the Renaissance people called it 'The Renaissance'?"
Besides work in comedy troupes, they created sketches of their own, and began touring with their act, as well as playing New York clubs and coffee houses.
The big time
Then, in 1962, Stiller & amp; Meara struck gold. They scored a booking on "The Ed Sullivan Show," their first of 36 appearances with the legendary, stone-faced impresario.
In the decades since, together and apart, they have appeared in dozens of film, stage and TV productions. Meara became a playwright, and in 1995 "After-Play" was produced off-Broadway; she and Stiller were in the cast.
They also reared a pair of future entertainers bearing the Stiller surname: actress and comedian Amy, and Ben, the actor-writer-director currently appearing in the film "Starsky & amp; Hutch."
"We never planned that this is the way it was gonna be," Stiller says. "There was no road map." He seems still surprised. And enjoying his omelet.