Five Things That Happened On June 13 In Soap History

In 1985, Stephen Nichols made his Days of Our Lives debut as Steve "Patch" Johnson, who would go on to become one of the show's most popular characters and half of the storied supercouple Patch and Kayla. The actor recalled to Soap Opera Digest in 2015 that when the character was first described to him, "Doris [Sabbagh, then- casting director], in her very New York way, said something like, ‘He works for one of the heavies on the show. He does bad things and he wears a patch! Just go, you’ll be great!’ ” Of Steve going from thug to romantic hero, Nichol added, "I thought the transition was well-written. In those days, they took time to allow for a character to grow and change."

In 1997, Billy Warlock began playing AJ Quartermaine on General Hospital. (Sean Kanan, who had most recently portrayed AJ, had just wrapped his run.) The actor remained with the show until 2003, then returned for a limited run in 2005, during which time the character of AJ was killed off. When he returned from the dead in 2012, Kanan reprised the role. AJ's (seemingly permanent) death at the hands of Sonny Corinthos was scripted in 2014.

In 2014, Sean Kanan (pictured with Rena Sofer as Quinn Fuller) returned to Bold and Beautiful as Deacon Sharpe after his most recent GH run wrapped with AJ's demise. He had originally appeared on the show from 2000-05, then crossed over to Y&R as Deacon from 2009-12. In 2012, he made several B&B appearances, and was put back on contract from 2014-16. He popped up again in 2017, then returned again on a full-time basis in 2021. Of this particular comeback, Kanan told Soap Opera Digest, "The timing is certainly perfect. I've always stayed in touch with Brad [Bell, executive producer/head writer] and when I realized that I was going to be leaving GH, I reached out to him, and to Brad's credit, he did everything he said he would do if my circumstances ever changed. He said, 'This is great. Let's move full steam ahead with this,' and here we are."

In 2016 on General Hospital, Brad Cooper (Parry Shen, r.) and Lucas Jones (Ryan Carnes) said, “I do” in the show's first same-sex nuptials. Soap Opera Digest dinged the ceremony as the Worst Wedding of the year in the annual Best & Worst issue, observing, "Brad and Lucas  should have gotten a lot more love on their big day.... Instead of celebrating this milestone, GH let it pass without even inviting a photographer to document it. Brad and Lucas pledged their troth in front of a whopping four guests, but we didn’t get to see the poignant service or subsequent toasts in full, as the show reduced them to a montage — and during what they did show, unhappily married Alexis and Julian got longer reaction shots than 'Brucas' did!"