Name: Dinah Lee Mayberry, aka Dinah Lee Mayberry Alden
Portrayer: Jessica Collins (August, 1991 – September 1, 1994); Elizabeth Mitchell (September 12, 1994 – April 28, 1995)
Siblings: Hannah Mayberry
Marriages: Curtis Alden (1993, divorced 1994)
History:
1991: Dinah Lee comes to Corinth to work as a nanny for the Forbes family, secretly having been hired by Clay and Shana (who were angry that their father had left his estate to Jack) to break up Jack and Stacey by seducing him. Though she succeeds in making Jack interested, he ultimately resists temptation and she loses her job at the Forbes’ nanny. Deciding to stay in Corinth, she develops a friendship with Trucker, whose marriage to Trisha has hit a rough patch. After a fight with Trisha, Trucker goes to Dinah Lee and they sleep together, which results in Trisha leaving him.
Although Gwyneth tries to pay her to leave town, Dinah Lee instead takes Gwyneth’s cheque for $10,000 and uses it to buy Pins. She then pursues a relationship with Trucker, who waffles back and forth over whether he wants to save his marriage or move on and abruptly ends things with Dinah Lee after she confesses that she’s in love with him. When she learns that Trucker and Trisha have reconciled, Dinah Lee is heartbroken.
1992: Despite Trucker’s reconciliation with Trisha, Dinah Lee continues to yearn for him and makes it clear that she remains available should he decide to leave his marriage after all. In an attempt to stop her from interfering in Trisha and Trucker’s marriage, Clay buys the mortgage to Pins and becomes her business partner, but when Trucker and Dinah Lee become locked in an equipment room on Valentine’s Day, Trisha mistakenly believes that they’ve resumed their affair and runs off. Although she feels guilty, she soon has concerns of her own when her sister, Hannah, arrives in Corinth, believing Dinah Lee’s claims that she’s found financial success as a businesswoman and personal success with a man named Trucker McKenzie, to whom she claims to be engaged. Knowing that Dinah Lee doesn’t want to have to admit the truth to Hannah, Clay pretends to be Trucker and he and Dinah Lee come up with a plan to keep up the ruse for the brief period until Hannah leaves town again. They end up pretending to get married, but when Gwyneth threatens to reveal the truth to Hannah with a focus on the fact that Dinah Lee attempted to break up one marriage and succeeded in breaking up another, Dinah Lee and Clay come clean and Dinah Lee explains that she lied because she was embarrassed by the truth.
Hannah quickly forgives Dinah Lee and Dinah Lee and Clay begin dating in earnest, though they face constant interference from Gwyneth and Isabelle. When Isabelle is hospitalized with a heart attack, she asks Clay and Gwyneth to fulfill her dying wish by remarrying. Though he’s now in love with Dinah Lee, Clay agrees to the request, but secretly continues seeing Dinah Lee and plans to have his marriage annulled once Isabelle returns to good health. Although he does get an annulment, when he discovers that he is not actually Cabot Alden’s son, but the son of a man named Tim Sullivan, Clay has a crisis of identity and breaks up with Dinah Lee, but won’t tell her why.
Clay flees town, leaving Dinah Lee confused and heartbroken about why he’s left her. Dinah Lee consoles herself by drinking to excess and sleeping around, but after receiving a letter informing her that she may have been exposed to an STD, she realizes that she needs to pull herself together. Taking Kate’s advice, Dinah Lee decides to get out of town for a while and goes to Pine Valley, where Kate has arranged for her to stay with her friend, Myrtle Fargate. While in Pine Valley Dinah Lee runs into Carter Jones, an old friend from her hometown, and learns that he’s hated by the residents of Pine Valley. At first Dinah Lee refuses to believe the bad things she hears about Carter, including that he was abusive to his ex-wife, Galen, but when she accidentally foils Carter’s plans to kill Trevor Dillon and frame Galen for the crime, she becomes Carter’s next target. She’s badly beaten by Carter and although she’s initially afraid to identify her attacker, before returning to Corinth she confirms that it was Carter. When Carter later shows up in Corinth, he tries to kill Dinah Lee, but she’s rescued by Jeremy.
Certain that he still loves her, Dinah Lee continues to be confused about her break up with Clay and her confusion is increased when he suddenly marries Stacey.
1993: Suspicious of Stacey’s sudden mental collapse, Dinah Lee turns to Jeremy and asks him to get to the bottom of it, agreeing to help prove that Clay manipulated Stacey. Although she comes to waver in her belief that Clay could do something so cruel, Dinah Lee ultimately decides that she’s finished with him after seeing what he’s capable of doing.
After Ava has a fight with Leo, she and Dinah Lee decide to get out of town and take a road trip, during the course of which they meet a stranded salesman and agree to give him a ride. When they find themselves unable to shake him, Ava becomes frustrated and gets physical with him, resulting in him taking a fall and possibly getting a concussion. When he later turns up dead in their car, they worry that they’ll be blamed for his death and go into hiding while trying to figure out what to do. They end up at Trucker’s cabin, but when Dinah Lee throws out her back, Ava decides to go into town to get help. As a storm is about to hit, Dinah Lee realizes that someone has been watching them and finds a mysterious man lurking outside. She agrees to let him shelter with her during the storm and they give each other false names. To him, she’s Betty, and to her, he’s Ronnie, and when he becomes ill with a fever, she goes to get help. When she returns, he’s gone, and she has no idea that he’s Curtis Alden. When they later meet again, they decide to maintain their false identities and only discover the truth about each other when they come face to face at Trisha’s funeral.
Neither Clay nor Gwyneth are happy to learn that their son is dating Dinah Lee, though Gwyneth tries to put the past behind them out of fear that Curtis will cut contact otherwise. Though Clay tries to accept the relationship, he also makes it clear that he’s still in love with Dinah Lee and that he believes that her feelings for him will eventually drive her and Curtis apart. Despite the tension between Clay and Dinah Lee, and despite Curtis’ growing anxiety about Dinah Lee’s past with his father, Curtis and Dinah Lee marry and move into the mansion. Almost immediately, the marriage becomes strained when Dinah Lee learns that Curtis was involved in a murder while serving in Kuwait, but it’s Curtis’ desire to control her that ultimately dooms their marriage, as he not only pressures her to give up Pins so that she’ll have more time for him, he also pressures her to have a baby. After setting fire to Pins and nearly killing Louie, whom he had not realized was inside, Curtis flees town and Dinah Lee finds herself once again left confused, heartbroken, and abandoned by an Alden man.
In the wake of Curtis’ departure, Dinah Lee and Trucker become increasingly close. She also becomes an object of interest for Joe, the man who has begun renting the apartment over Pins and who is actually Dante Partou, the man Curtis thought he had killed. Unbeknownst to Dinah Lee, Dante has been holding Curtis captive in the apartment and now plans to take Dinah Lee overseas and make her his wife. Realizing too late that Trucker’s warnings about Joe had merit, Dinah Lee is kidnapped by Dante, but rescued when Tess offers herself as an alternative. In the aftermath, Dinah Lee reunites with Curtis despite her feelings for Trucker.
1994: As a result of his experience with Dante, Curtis struggles with PTSD, but wants to pretend that everything is fine. When Dinah Lee tries to explain to him that something happened between her and Trucker while he was away, he doesn’t want to hear it and insists that they should focus on the future instead of the past. Though she tries to do just that, Curtis continuously tests her loyalty by pushing her towards Trucker and the result is that Trucker and Dinah Lee can no longer deny the fact that they’re in love with each other. When Curtis finally asks Dinah Lee if Trucker is the one that she loves, she admits that he is and they break up, though Curtis is determined to win her back. Out of respect for Curtis and what he’s been through, Trucker and Dinah Lee try to keep their relationship lowkey, but eventually begin to be open about the fact that they’re together. In an effort to come between them, Curtis begins creating “signs” to remind Trucker of Trisha, which eventually make Trucker question whether Trisha is really dead and sends him to Rome on a quest to find the truth. When she learns that the “signs” were just manipulations by Curtis, Dinah Lee is furious and goes to Rome to tell Trucker that it was all a hoax. They return to Corinth and become engaged, but after hearing Trucker whisper Trisha’s name in his sleep, Dinah Lee decides that their relationship is over. Even the discovery that she’s pregnant does not change her mind, as she is convinced that she will always be second best to Trisha, and she decides to leave town to get some distance from Trucker.
Not wanting to see Trucker lose another woman that he loves, Buck goes to New York and convinces Dinah Lee to come home, but on their way back to Corinth, their plane crashes. Dinah Lee is critically injured and loses the baby and, while she’s in the hospital, suffers from a stroke. When she’s released from the hospital, Trucker moves her into the Tides and cares for her as she recovers and struggles to regain her motor functions. As part of her recovery, she engages in art therapy with Jeremy, however, the man presenting as Jeremy is actually Jeremy’s twin, Gilbert. Though she realizes that something is wrong with “Jeremy,” her inability to communicate clearly keeps her from explaining herself to Trucker and it’s not until they decipher the hidden message in Jeremy’s paintings that they realize that Jeremy has been replaced by a double.
1995: Trucker and Dinah Lee make plans to marry, but she experiences anxiety that he’s not really over Trisha. In an effort to prove to her that there are no lingering doubts in his mind, Trucker has Trisha’s body exhumed to prove that she’s really dead, but the result is the opposite: they learn that the body in Trisha’s grave is not Trisha. Dinah Lee goes with Trucker when he returns to Rome to search for Trisha but, though they catch a glimpse of her, she soon disappears. Determined to track her town, Trucker continues the search while Dinah Lee returns to Corinth, wondering if her relationship with Trucker will survive. Eventually she gets word that Trucker has found Trisha and she delivers a letter from Trisha to the Aldens. She then gets a message from Trucker, asking her to bring Christopher to Maine, where he hopes they can start over fresh.
Loving (1983-1995) 