Laura Deibel married Tim Allen on April 7, 1984. They legally separated in 1999 and the divorce became final in 2003. They have one daughter, Katherine, born in 1989. That is close to everything reliable sources confirm about Tim Allen's first wife.
Plenty of websites claim more, such as an exact birthday, a hometown and a second career. Most of it contradicts the next site over. This biography sticks to what holds up and says plainly where it doesn't.
Where Laura Deibel and Tim Allen met
Allen moved to Western Michigan University in 1974 and graduated in 1976 with a communications degree, according to his Wikipedia entry. Deibel was a student there too. Nearly every profile calls her his college sweetheart, and Cheat Sheet says they dated for years before the wedding.
The prison years came first
This is the part of the story that gives Deibel her place in Allen's biography, so it needs the most care.
On October 2, 1978, police arrested Allen at the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek airport with more than 650 grams of cocaine. He pleaded guilty to felony trafficking and named other dealers, which got him a sentence of three to seven years instead of possible life.
Parole came on June 12, 1981, after two years and four months at a federal prison in Sandstone, Minnesota. All of that comes from his Wikipedia entry.
Deibel stayed in his life through the lean years that followed. A later Cheat Sheet piece says she backed him after the sentence and again while he struggled as an actor in the 1980s. She told People in 1991: "We loved each other. It was that simple."
One source disagrees on the order of events. Turner Classic Movies' biography says they married in April 1978 and that the arrest came later that year. Wikipedia and most other profiles put the wedding in 1984, three years after his release. I'm using that date. If you see 1978 somewhere, it traces back to that one entry.
Why the marriage ended
Home Improvement premiered in 1991, and by the eighth season Allen earned $1.25 million per episode. Hollywood Life, quoting People, reports that a friend described her adjustment to his fame as hard.
In 1999 she filed to separate and cited irreconcilable differences, according to the same Cheat Sheet article. Allen had been arrested for drunk driving in Birmingham, Michigan, the year before, and part of his sentence was a stay in rehab. No source I found ties the two events together, so I won't either.
Four years passed between the separation and the final divorce in 2003, a gap that no reliable source I found explains, and that most profiles skip over without comment.
Katherine and the family since the divorce
Katherine was born in December 1989, according to Wikipedia. One profile gives October 6 instead, and I couldn't confirm it. By the accounts I found, she keeps her life private and shows up at red-carpet events with her father only now and then.
Allen married the actress Jane Hajduk on October 7, 2006, in a small ceremony in Grand Lake, Colorado, after five years of dating. Their daughter Elizabeth arrived in March 2009. Laura Deibel is the mother of the older of his two daughters.
Why her online biography contradicts itself
Search her name and November 12, 1956 turns up on several pages. None of them link a birth record or an interview. Other pages say 1959 or 1960, and nobody explains the difference.
Birthplaces split the same way. Omena, Michigan shows up on some pages and Saginaw on another, while one site says Birmingham, Alabama.
Her work history is just as messy. One profile calls her a sales manager at an interior landscape company, and TCM lists her as a landscape designer, so those two at least point the same direction. Other pages describe a comedian, or a CEO of a tool line, or an actress who appeared on The Drew Carey Show. I found nothing credible behind any of those.
The "$1 million net worth" figure comes with no method at all.
You can spot the pattern quickly. The pages repeat the same facts about Allen, then fill the remaining space with phrases like "quiet strength."
My view: Deibel never sought publicity. A missing birthday beats an invented one. If a claim about her can't be traced to a named outlet, treat it as unconfirmed.
Quick answers
Was Laura Deibel on Home Improvement? A few sites say so. None cite a cast list, and Allen's Wikipedia page never mentions her working on it.
What does she do now? There is no reliable reporting on it, and I won't guess.
If you need to check a specific claim about her, start with People's coverage from 1991 and 1999, since the better-sourced profiles trace back to those two pieces. Then skip any page that can't say where its birthday came from.
Sources
- Tim Allen, Wikipedia via Wikiwand: birth, education, marriages, arrest, parole, DUI, children, earnings.
- Cheat Sheet, "Is Tim Allen married and how many children does he have": the 1991 People quote, the 1999 filing, her support during his early career.
- Yahoo Lifestyle, Tim Allen and Jane Hajduk: college sweetheart, daughter, separation and divorce years.
- Hollywood Life, Tim Allen's wives: friend's comment to People on her adjustment to his fame.
- Turner Classic Movies, Tim Allen: the conflicting 1978 marriage date and her listed occupation.
- Briefly, Laura Deibel profile: sales manager role and Katherine's reported private life.
