The Captain & Tennille Are Getting Divorced. Love Is Well and Truly Dead.

All of you under 30, go watch MTV or something for a while (kids still do that, right?). And if you hear your mom crying, it’s okay. She’s just mourning the death of love because Daryl Dragon and Toni Tennille — aka the Captain & Tennille, America’s greatest purveyors of 70s pop schmaltz — are getting divorced.

And the story might be even sadder than it already seems.

The couple, who is responsible for such classic hits as “Love Will Keep Up Together” and “Muskrat Love,” is breaking up after 39 years of marriage.

The Prescott, Arizona City Courthouse tells RumorFix that Toni Tennille, whose real name is Cathryn Antoinette Tennille, 73, filed for divorce against Daryl Dragon, 71, on January 16.

Awful, right? Couples that age who’ve been together that long very rarely split. It’s enough to make a LOLCAT cry.

But then TMZ added a new twist — because it spoke to Daryl, who not only said he and Toni are still living together, but added, “I don’t know why she filed. I gotta figure it out for myself first.”

That makes no sense — until you hear the rest of the story (emphasis mine):

According to the divorce docs, obtained by TMZ, there’s special mention about health insurance coverage, and that seems relevant, because in 2009 Toni blogged that Daryl had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. In 2011 Toni updated the message, saying Daryl’s tremors were so bad he was embarrassed to go out in public … to restaurants, the movies, etc.

Here’s what’s unclear — whether it’s possible Toni really filed for health insurance reasons … whether his coverage might be better if they were divorced.

The blog has an update on Jan 16, 2014, saying “The Captain & Tennille appeared to the public as them being the ideal model for a ‘rock-solid’ married pair. But almost all people naturally evolve over time, & sometimes hidden feelings start to be uncovered …”

The Captain & Tennille never achieved the same hipster cred (nor the accompanying tribute albums) contemporaries of theirs like The Carpenters did, but even still, most of the celebrity net worth sites on the web peg Toni’s worth alone at $9 million. Assuming that’s true, it’s hard to imagine she’s undoing a four-decade marriage just to save a little money. (Then again, insurance companies are douchebags, so.)

No idea what’s really going on here, but either way, it’s all terribly depressing.