Nanette Fabray has stated in interviews that she was overjoyed to be cast as Mary's mother and hoped this would lead to her and Bill Quinn playing Walt and Dottie Richard's on a recurring basis. However, Fabray was dismayed that after only a couple of appearances their characters never appeared again, and would become offscreen characters for the rest of the series. Fabray felt that perhaps Mary Tyler Moore and she did not develop a good on-screen chemistry and thus the character was dropped. Fabray asked Moore years later as to why her character never continued and was assured by Moore it had nothing to do with her performance although Fabray was never quite sure that was not the reason.
According to this episode, Mary's monthly rent is $135.
Bill Quinn appears as Mary's father, Walter Richards, in this episode. In real life, Quinn was the father-in-law of comedian/actor Bob Newhart, whose 1970s show "The Bob Newhart Show" was produced by Mary Tyler Moore and (then husband) Grant Tinker's production company, MTM Enterprises.
Despite the fact that Nanette Fabray played Mary's Mother, in reality she was only 16 years older than Mary Tyler Moore in real life.
Mary's father's full name is Walter Reed Richards. This means that he was named after US Army surgeon Walter Reed, who discovered the cause of Yellow Fever during the Spanish American War. It implies that his parents expected him to be a doctor, probably as a family tradition.