A&E Network "Gene Simmons Family Jewels" will premiere on Monday on the A&E Network. From left are Nick, Sophie, Gene Simmons and Shannon Tweed.

By Luaine Lee
McClatchy-Tribune News Service Who woulda thought a former Playmate of the Year and scorching blonde from TV soaps would end up president of the PTA?

Shannon Tweed, statuesque co-star on such shows as "Frasier," "Married With Children" and "Wings," may be better known as the longtime mate of Gene Simmons, lead guru of the band Kiss.

"We're not married," she says right off. "We've been together for 23 years in August."

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The secret to their success? She says, "Don't get married, don't get divorced. I'm not the jealous type, really. Other than girls throwing themselves on him physically, I really don't get bothered by the attention he gets. You never know what happens when you're not there -- but leave that alone, why would you want to go there? And don't nag: 'When you coming home? I waited and yah, yah, yah.' Get a life," she says, easing her 6-foot tall frame onto a low velvet couch.

The partnership of this former hick from Canada and one of the world's most famous rockers will be chronicled on the new reality show "Gene Simmons Family Jewels," premiering Monday on A&E.

Raised on a mink farm in Newfoundland, one of seven children, Tweed was 24 when she moved to Los Angeles. "I started all my wildness kind of late in life. ... At one point my dream was to be in the Sears catalog. I was from a small town, and to me that was gigantic."

Not nearly as gigantic as it became. Soon she was Hugh Hefner's girlfriend, waltzing on the wild side and capitalizing on her breathless looks in shows like "Falcon Crest" and "Days of Our Lives." In fact, she met Simmons at a party at Hefner's lair.

"It was his first time there," she recalls, her blond hair spilling over the shoulder of her black dress.

"He got there with two other girls who brought him there for his birthday, and my sister and a music producer, Richard Perry, introduced me to him. And I was not that impressed. He wasn't really my type when I looked at him, but he grows on you. He did this tap dance, he was dancing as fast as he could and was really trying to impress me so I gave him a second look," she smiles.

Instead of Tweed taming the rock star, it was the other way around.

"Gene was my sobering device," she admits. "And I was a little tipsy when I met him. And that was the last time I was drunk, and that was 23 years ago. And I haven't been drunk since then. I actually stopped drinking completely for about 20 years."

The couple have two children, Sophie, 14, and Nick, 18. The kids weren't prepared for the amount of work involved in a reality show, says Tweed. "They didn't have a weekend off for the year. They can't go to their friend's house unless they give permission for the camera to follow. So mostly we were confined to our own activities with each other," she says.

"In a way they understand now how being in the limelight is not an easy-ride thing. I have no idea what pressure someone like Katie Holmes must be under. I saw her shopping at Neiman Marcus before the baby, and everybody stopped shopping and were staring at what shoes she was trying on. That's not fun, I think. I can breeze through virtually unnoticed. The payoff is she'd make more money than I do, but I don't know if I'd trade."

Tweed sighs. "At one point I would've traded anything for that. But I'll be 50, and I don't think I'd trade anything for that now."