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An episode set to air next Monday will feature the couple -- which has already survived a kidnapping, a drowning and separation -- splitting, apparently for good.
"In a moving and emotional montage, Luke and Laura acknowledge the end of their marriage with a love and admiration in their eyes, but with hope for their future," Reuters quoted an ABC announcement.
The couple, played by Anthony Geary and Genie Francis, wed on TV on Nov. 16, 1981. The show was viewed by 30 million viewers -- the highest-rated daytime program in TV history, according to Reuters.
Geary and Francis will continue to appear on the show after the split. Francis joined the cast in 1976 when she was 14, while Geary first appeared as a delinquent youth in 1978, Reuters said.
Francis left the show a year after the marriage. The plot accommodated her departure with a storyline that had Laura fall off a pier and presumably drown.
She returned in 1983, with the revelation that she hadn't drowned but had been kidnapped. Geary then left the show, and their departure was explained as the couple planned a round-the-world holiday.
Geary returned to the show in 1991 as Luke's cousin, but the character was killed off in 1993, just as Francis returned to the series, Reuters said. The Luke character was reactivated for a reunion between the couple.