This 1980s Salem Supercouple Still Thrills ‘Days of our Lives’ Fans Today

Days of our Lives defined the soap opera supercouple craze of the 1980s. While General Hospital’s Luke and Laura started it all, DAYS jumped on the bandwagon and became a practical supercouple factory, giving us pairings like Bo (Peter Reckell) and Hope (Kristian Alfonso), Kim (Patsy Pease) and Shane (Charles Shaughnessy), Jack (Matthew Ashford) and Jennifer (Melissa Reeves), and, of course, Steve (Stephen Nichols) and Kayla (Mary Beth Evans).

Steve and Kayla Stand the Test of Time

While those other three couples are still together off-screen, Steve and Kayla are still together on-screen and are one of Salem’s most solid couples, but it wasn’t always smooth sailing. Kayla was the good-girl nurse who had just opened a free clinic while Steve was a thug working for Victor Kiriakis (John Aniston) and was also the former friend and current enemy of her brother Bo.

It was a classic good-girl-tames-bad-guy plot that turned Steve from an outlaw into a government agent, with some rogue moments in between. Their initial romance came with angst as Steve pushed Kayla to marry his brother, Jack, when Jack thought he was dying from cancer. Their first wedding later came with a miracle when Kayla spoke her vows after being left deaf and mute after an explosion. Her hearing had returned prior to the wedding, but her voice returned during the ceremony.

Multiple marriages, two kids, romances with others, and requisite presumed-dead plots have not been able to sever Steve and Kayla’s ties through the years. Today, Kayla is the chief of staff at Salem University Hospital while Steve still runs the Black Patch Detective Agency.

“I think about the connection that Stephen and I had from the beginning, and what a beautiful love story was written,” Evans said of Steve and Kayla’s love story earlier this year in an interview with TV Insider. “They don’t make supercouples like that anymore. Back then, if they saw the spark and that it worked, they really ran with it. I was lucky to be paired with him.”