Charles "Charlie" Nylund, Sr.

Charles "Charlie" Nylund, Sr. is Rose Nylund's late husband. He was an insurance salesman and lived with Rose in St. Olaf. His family owned a successful grout company. When he and Rose became engaged, his parents threatened to cut him out of the family tile grout fortune. He was Rose's first lover and is revealed to have died of a heart attack while making love with Rose while in their old age.

Personal Life and Death
Charlie Nylund was born in 1929, one year before his future wife, Rose Lindstrom. Charlie and Rose first met in 1937, when she purchased a nickel insurance policy from his stand for her red wagon. His insurance policy did not cover acts of swine. One day when Rose was hauling home a smoked ham, hogs were set off and trampled it. Charlie paid for the replacement wagon himself. Though it was love at first sight, and he proposed marriage, Rose was told to wait by her mother, Alma. According to Rose, Charlie was said to have been so well-endowed he'd have made a bull jealous, which shocked both Blanche and Dorothy to point the former wanted to learn more details.

In 1948, she married Charlie Nylund in St. Olaf Church. They had six children in the following years. Though he always wanted to be, and was, an insurance salesman for some time, he was eventually fired for giving up too often. He then was employed with an iron company, where he specialized in making horseshoes. He could never pass a horse without saying "Can I show you something in an Oxford?" causing him and Rose to laugh. According to Rose, sometimes even the horse would laugh.

In 1979, at the age of 50, Charlie took a business trip from St. Olaf to Miami. Due to Blanche taking pictures with double-exposed film in Charlie's old camera, Rose believed that Charlie and Blanche had an affair.

In 1980, Charlie had a heart attack while making love with Rose, and after dressing him in a blue flannel shirt and striped tie, he died at the age of 51, after 32 years of marriage (Though earlier episodes claim Charlie died in 1970). About 2 years after his death, Rose Nylund moved to Miami, where she would live in an apartment for 3 years, before being evicted by her senile landlord, due to her new cat, Mr. Peepers. Due to these events, Rose Nylund met Blanche Devereaux at the supermarket, and moved into her house, where she spent the next 7 years, before Dorothy Zbornak moved out, and she, Blanche, and Sophia Petrillo purchased the Golden Palace Hotel, where they would remain for several years later.

Trivia

 * Betty White said in an interview that it was sometimes difficult to do a scene that involved the characters late husband, Charlie because she always had to think of her real-life late husband Allen Ludden, during those scenes.
 * is the only late and/or divorced husband whose never made an appearance while Dorothy, Blanche, and Sophia's late or divorced husbands made an appearance.