Regarded as a preeminent soap opera star of the 1970s,[2] Reinholt's move to ABC was considered a major get for the show garnered by One Life's consulting producer, creator, and former AW head writer Agnes Nixon.

[2][5] He was soon joined by fired fellow AW actor and off-and-onscreen girlfriend Jacqueline "Jacquie" Courtney, who played Alice Matthews on the NBC series and created the role of OLTL's Pat Ashley.

[2] Reinholt eventually left the series in 1977 after his soap opera repairing with Courtney failed to match the popular acclaim of their prior onscreen romance.

[9][10] MacHale returned in the role for dream sequences involving onscreen sister Viki for episodes in March and April 1987.

[13] The assumed cousin of central heroine Victoria "Viki" Lord Riley (Erika Slezak), Tony Harris (Reinholt) arrives in Llanview in April 1975 in search of his birth father.

[5] Dr. Dorian Cramer (Nancy Pinkerton) and philandering married boyfriend Dr. Mark Toland (Tom Lee Jones) are first to recognize Tony as Victor's estranged son.

Overwrought over the death of the stillborn child, Cathy begins to lose touch with reality and rages over the pregnancy news of archrival Viki with husband Joe Riley (Lee Patterson).

Meanwhile, new Banner editor and Tony's ex-girlfriend Patricia "Pat" Ashley (Jacqueline Courtney) arrives in Llanview was still in love with him, but chooses to keep her distance from him.

[25] In 1983, Pat receives the news that Tony had been killed on assignment for The Banner in Lebanon by a terrorist group; the widow soon leaves Llanview to accept a job in Chicago.