There's a week back in 1999 that stands out in the memories of husband and wife Bradley Whitford and Jane Kaczmarek. Both were making a living as actors, but they hadn't achieved break-out success. And they were the parents of a 1-year-old.
"We always remember a week in May when the phone rang one day and it was NBC saying 'West Wing' had gotten picked up," Kaczmarek said. "And the next day Fox called and said 'Malcolm' had gotten picked up. And the next day the doctor called and told me I was pregnant again.
"So we just thought, 'Wow, I wonder if our lives are going to change?' "
Yeah, just a little. Seven years, six Emmy nominations and another baby later, Kaczmarek, 50, is easily identified as Lois, the "Malcolm in the Middle" mom. Whitford, 45, has three Emmy nominations and one win for his role as Josh Lyman on "The West Wing." Coincidentally, both shows end their seven-season runs opposite one another on Sunday — "West Wing" at 7 p.m. on NBC/Ch. 5; "Malcolm" at 7:30 p.m. on Fox/Ch. 13.
Seven years of starring in TV series wasn't something they were anticipating. Kaczmarek had appeared in dozens of series and movies, but "I was also suffering the indignities of an actress in my early 40s during pilot season." And she was "very happy not acting and taking care of my baby."
But she loved the "Malcolm" pilot script, even though she never for a moment thought it would get on the air.
"I thought it was just so good that it wouldn't get picked up," Kaczmarek said. "My husband was doing the pilot for 'The West Wing,' and we were renovating a house. . . . And he kept saying, 'Are you sure you want to work?' And I said, 'It'll never go. And if it does, I'll be the mom on a kids show and I'll work one day a week.' "
But Lois turned out to be a full-time job.
"I thought that doing the pilot would pay for the new bathroom on the house. Never in a million years did I think this would turn into what it did."
Whitford, meanwhile, couldn't resist the offer to join "The West Wing."
"It is a miracle to make a living as an actor. It's a miracle to make a living in a non-humiliating way as an actor," he said. "And it is an incredible miracle to have a situation like this."
The odds against one actor landing a role on a TV series that runs seven years are astronomical. The odds against two actors married to each other doing it at the same time are incalculable.
"These television shows, they're like alchemy," Whitford said. "It's like a miracle when it works."
As "Malcolm" and "West Wing" draw to an end, "Our lives are certainly going to change again," Whitford said.
And, for the moment, slow down quite a bit.
"Oh, it's heaven," Kaczmarek said.
"From playing a mother on television, I'm playing a mother in real life. And, right now, all those banal, mundane things are just delightful — driving my kids to school, lying on the couch and reading the newspaper on Sundays."
Which is a big switch from spending Sunday nights trying to get the kids ready to go back to school and off to bed so that they could be up at 5 a.m. to go to work.
"It's such a remarkable feeling to have this amount of time because that schedule was really quite grueling," Kaczmarek said.
Even while they're getting to spend more time with their family, it wasn't easy to leave their TV families behind. Kaczmarek could hardly speak as she talked about the last week on the "Malcolm" set.
"I get choked up just thinking about it. It was so emotional," Kaczmarek said.
Whitford and the rest of the "West Wing" cast also lost their friend and fellow cast member, John Spencer, who died suddenly in December.
"It's very hard," Whitford said. "We spend many, many, many hours together. We've all gone through this identity crisis together of being in public and just spent so much time together. It's — it's very hard to understand how somebody just goes away."
Kaczmarek said she learned a lot by playing the mother of five boys.
"I learned a great lesson from these boys, which was that sometimes children are just incredibly irritating," Kaczmarek said. "Oh my gosh — 12-year-old boys, 13-year-old boys! Lois came very easily to me in those early years.
"As the years went by and we really spent that much time together and the boys kind of grew up a little bit and I probably softened a little bit — you just grow into this bond and a real family love from being with people. And those boys are so dear to me now in a way that I never expected when we first started the show," she said with a laugh.
"And (Frankie Muniz, Justin Berfield, Erik Per Sullivan and Christopher Kennedy Masterson) are such good boys. . . . They're boys that I think any mother would really be proud to have as sons.
"And (co-star) Bryan (Cranston) is an extraordinary father and husband."
Whitford and Kaczmarek aren't thinking about retiring from acting, but they can pick and choose their roles. They haven't spent the past seven years living an opulent Hollywood lifestyle — they don't have to take roles for the paycheck.
"I've paid for the house. I drive a Honda hybrid. I don't live big. I'm not a shopper or a jewelry person," Kaczmarek said. "Brad and I, we've saved, we've paid off mortgages, we've paid . . . for the kids' college and it's a great luxury to be able to just sit and think about what you really want to do. And to just read the newspaper for hours and hours and not worry about too much."
Whitford has signed on to "West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin's new series — tentatively titled "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" — which will debut on NBC in the fall. Kaczmarek appeared in a Ted Danson sitcom pilot ("Help Me Help You") that ABC is considering for next season and could do a few episodes of that show if it gets picked up. Other than that, "I've been just turning everything down out of hand. It's a magnificent feeling, and I think I just want to sit with it for as long as I can until something comes along that I feel I have to do.
"I said to my daughter, who was so excited when ('Malcolm' went off), 'Wait — give me a year and you'll probably be calling my agent and say, 'Can you get her out of the house?' "
In the meantime, the big question at the Whitford-Kaczmarek house is — which show to watch and which to TiVo on Sunday?
"We've been leaning toward watching 'Malcolm' and TiVo-ing 'The West Wing,' but then someone said when you TiVo it, you get to watch it over and over again," Kaczmarek said. "You can't be TiVo-ing them both at the same time."
"Jane, you need to upgrade your TiVo," interjected "Malcolm" creator/executive producer Linwood Boomer. "They totally have ones that can tape two shows at one time."
"You're kidding!" Kaczmarek said with genuine surprise in her voice.
"I have one. It's fantastic," Boomer said. "It will save your marriage."
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com