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Mary Richards, portrayed by Mary Tyler Moore, is the lead character of the television sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
After arriving in Minneapolis, Mary leases an apartment in her friend, Phyllis Lindstrom's house. Also renting an attic loft from Phyllis is Rhoda Morgenstern, with whom Mary becomes fast friends. Mary also bonds with Phyllis's precocious daughter, Bess.
Mary applies for a secretarial job at television station WJM-TV, the area's lowest rated channel. After meeting with news producer Lou Grant, she learns the position has been filled but she is hired as an associate producer. Later, Mary is promoted to producer when Lou becomes the news director. While at WJM, she quickly becomes friends with newswriter Murray Slaughter and vain, incompetent News presenter Ted Baxter. In the office, Mary is often the voice of reason. Lou—always called Mr. Grant by Mary—later develops an almost-fatherly relationship with her.
Other friends of Mary's include WJM's Happy Homemaker Sue Ann Nivens, and Georgette Franklin, who later marries Ted.
In the final episode of the series, the entire newsroom staff is fired—with the exception of Ted—in an effort to boost sagging Nielsen ratings.
The Mary Richards character makes several guest appearances on spinoffs Rhoda and Phyllis via visits to New York and San Francisco, respectively, and in scenes via telephone. During one San Francisco trip, she befriends Phyllis's main nemesis, "Mother Dexter". In the opening scene of the Rhoda pilot, Mary accompanies Rhoda to the Minneapolis airport to see her off, but the scene was not shown in U.S. syndication, nor in the DVD release of Rhoda.
After her husband's 1999 death in a rock climbing accident, Mary discovers that he has squandered their money in his reelection campaigns. By this time, Rose is an English major at NYU. After spending time in Europe, Mary returns home to New York City in 2000 and reconnects with best friend Rhoda, also returning to New York City after having lived for a time in Paris. After job-hunting again for the first time in years, Mary is hired as a segment producer for WNYT in New York. There she works under station founder Jonah Seimeier, who's little more than half Mary's age.
Mary Richards "gave a humanely plausible version of American women—some American women—in the early and mid-'70s", Lance Morrow wrote in Time before the show's last episode: "She was single, independent, pursued her career, was interested in men but not in an obsessive, husband-trapping way. Many women in the audience felt happier with themselves because of her". When Mary spent the night with a date, he said, "men all over the country were inconsolable; they felt betrayed". The magazine, in naming The Mary Tyler Moore Show one of seventeen series that changed television, wrote that "Moore made Mary into a fully realized person, iconic but fallible, competent but flappable... Mary was human and strong enough to be laughed with and laughed at". In 1992, Entertainment Weekly called her "the first great grown-up single working woman on TV", and in 1999, Entertainment Weekly ranked Mary's opening credits hat toss as television's second greatest moment. On Bravo's 100 Greatest TV Characters, she was ranked eighth, the highest position of the four Mary Tyler Moore Show characters on this list.
In 1999, TV Guide ranked her number 21 on its 50 Greatest TV Characters of All Time list.
In 2002, TV Land honored Mary Richards with a statue on Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis; it depicts Mary throwing her tam into the air, the same pose seen in the freeze frame at the end of the opening credits.
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