Tad (then Matthew Anton), whose birthdate is noted as September 1, 1963, is beaten and abandoned (off-screen) by his biological father Ray Gardner (Gil Rogers).

Tad (Michael E. Knight onward, except for a brief appearance by Terrell Anthony in 1990) returns to Pine Valley January 19, 1983, SORASed to age 20.

He begins seeing Liza Colby (Marcy Walker, briefly Alice Haining in 1984), a rival of his biological sister, Jenny Gardner (Kim Delaney) for the affections of Greg Nelson (Laurence Lau).

In 1984, Edna Thornton Ferguson (Sandy Gabriel) pays Tad to date her daughter, Dottie Thornton (Tasia Valenza) at the same time, he falls in love with Hillary Wilson (Carmen Thomas), step-daughter of town matriarch Phoebe Tyler Wallingford (Ruth Warrick) and daughter of Langley Wallingford (Louis Edmonds) Tad's sister Jenny is killed in a jet ski explosion, and Hillary reaches out to help him cope with his loss, but encourages him to do right by Dottie when he gets her pregnant.

Meanwhile, Hillary captures the attention of Tad's friend, Bob Georgia (Peter Strong) who soon learns he is terminally ill. She agrees to marry him to make his last days happy.

Hillary discovers con artist Wade Matthews (Christopher Holder) has evil intentions toward her stepmother, Phoebe, and that Tad knows but is keeping it secret under threat of blackmail.

Between the stress of this revelation and Hillary's focus on law school, Tad succumbs to the attentions of a lounge singer, who is revealed to be Adam Chandler's estranged daughter, Skye Chandler (Antoinette Byron, then Robin Christopher) despite desperate attempts to gain Hillary's forgiveness after she finds out about Tad's infidelity, she ends their marriage.

He quickly has an affair with Barbara Montgomery (Susan Pratt), and then meets billionaire Adam's (David Canary) new maid, Dixie Cooney (Cady McClain).

Adam hires Dixie, the niece of his bitter business rival Palmer Cortlandt (James Mitchell), with the ulterior motive of producing a son, an heir to the Chandler fortune.

Tad's biological mother, Opal Cortlandt (now Jill Larson), returns to Pine Valley, and helps Palmer break up the couple.

Shortly thereafter, the evil pimp Billy Clyde Tuggle (Matthews Cowles), who is obsessed with Dixie, kidnaps her in an effort to force her to marry him.

The real Ted Orsini (also Michael E. Knight) eventually arrives in Pine Valley, showing up injured at a cabin Dixie is staying in while sorting out her feelings for Tad.

Dixie spends a fair amount of time during this period trying to convince the residents of Pine Valley that Ted is misunderstood, but eventually even she realizes he is a lost cause.

She initially hopes this news might sway Tad's feelings about ending their marriage, but the pregnancy is discovered to be ectopic and is terminated to save Brooke's life.

Needing time to think things out, they make a plan to meet at the top of the Statler Building if they each decide they really love each other and want to be together.

Liza marries Adam, and when they began having problems, Tad conspires with her to successfully take over control of Chandler Enterprises.

As Tad goes to the airport, heading for Zürich, Opal receives a phone call and rushes to tell Brooke the horrible news.

In 2003, Tad begins to emerge from his dark place when he enlists his investigator skills to help Brooke find out if Maria Santos Grey (Eva La Rue) is still alive.

Doing research for Fusion, he gets to know the girls there well, and finds himself slightly smitten with the marketing director, Simone Torres (Terri Ivens), whom Tad sums up as "one hot tamale".

When JR returns home after running off to join the Merchant Marines in the aftermath of his mother's death, he surprises everyone by presenting to them his new wife, Babe Carey (Alexa Havins, later Amanda Baker), a pretty blonde he met in San Diego.

Tad discovers that Babe seduced his son Jamie (Micah Alberti, later Justin Bruening) the very night she and JR returned to Pine Valley, and begins to investigate her.

In 2004, Babe and Erica Kane's daughter, Bianca Montgomery (Eden Riegel), are both pregnant, and they go into labor while stranded in a cabin in the woods.

Babe's ex-husband Paul Cramer (Brock Cuchna, later Shane McRae and then David Tom), in a crossover role from One Life to Live, flies his helicopter in to help.

When she remembers that she did have a boy, and that Bess Chandler must be Bianca's baby, she and Krystal decide to keep up the facade for the sake of JR, who has fallen in love with his "daughter."

Jamie and Babe come up with a plan to kidnap her baby back and they set out as fugitives, checking in with Tad and Krystal periodically, as they cross over to One Life to Live.

At the same time, Tad discovers Julia Santos (Sydney Penny) hiding in Wildwind, having escaped Witness Protection to confront the crime lord who killed her husband.

Thinking she was dying after the accident, she signed Kate away to Dr. Greg Madden (Ian Buchanan), who tricked her into believing Tad could not love the child due to the painful memories associated with her birth.

Jesse and Angie's son, Frank Hubbard (Cornelius Smith Jr.), becomes ill after ingesting a toxin in the Pine Valley woods.

A crime lord, called The Papel, had threatened to hurt his family, thinking Jesse was in the possession of a rare uncut diamond.

He then begins working for Ryan Lavery (Cameron Mathison), doing an undercover investigation of Dr Riley Sinclair (McKenzie Westmore).