Ned Flanders
Ned is a double widower, having been married to the equally religious Maude. They had two children together; the sheltered and naive Rod and Todd Flanders. In the eleventh season, Maude died an untimely death in a freak accident involving a T-shirt cannon, leaving Flanders alone and grieving. While still married to Maude, Ned married Ginger, while on a drunken bender in Las Vegas. Ginger came to live with Ned and his sons for a brief period following Maude's death in a later episode, but she quickly grew tired of the Flanders' sickly-sweet personalities and fled. Despite his outward nerdishness, Flanders has also been connected romantically with a beautiful Christian-rock singer, Rachel Jordan, movie star Sara Sloane and eventually marrying local teacher Edna Krabappel until she died as well.
Winifred Nicholson
In 1924 Nicholson, who believed that she was unable to conceive, joined the Christian Science movement, which was in vogue in Britain at that time. She and Ben eventually had three children: Jake was born in 1927, Kate in July 1929, and Andrew in 1931. By the time of Kate's birth there were tensions in the marriage, and these were exacerbated by the suicide of their close friend, the painter Kit Wood, in August 1930. In 1931 Ben met Barbara Hepworth – whom he later married – and he and Winifred separated. In 1932 Winifred moved with her three children to Paris, and from then until 1936 Ben often visited them there, sometimes with Hepworth. The marriage ended in divorce in 1938, and Ben married Hepworth in November of the same year.