Betty White has been stealing scenes and making audiences laugh for more than 60 years, but she got her start at the most common of places: the family dinner table.

"My dad was a salesman, so he was always bringing jokes home," says White, who most recently upstaged Sandra Bullock in the hit movie "The Proposal." "It was up to me to get 'em or not," White says. "But he'd say, 'Honey, you can take this one to school, but I wouldn't take that one.' "

Over more than six decades, White long has since made the jokes her own, in movies and on TV. Next Saturday, the Screen Actors Guild will honor the beloved comedic actress with a Life Achievement Award. USA WEEKEND recently spoke with the former "Golden Girls" star, who turns 88 next Friday, about the secrets behind her continued success.

Congratulations!

I can't be coy about [getting the award]. I'm thrilled to pieces.

What was your start?

I didn't actually start in TV until 1949 -- on a show, "Tom, Dick and Harry," starring three comedians. It was silly business, but it was fun.

Al Jarvis saw me on that and put me on [his show] as his "girl Friday." He was a disc jockey, but that wasn't enough for him, so he started a TV show. We did five and a half hours a day -- no scripts, no nothing. You made it up as you went along.

For years, you were the first lady of game shows.

I just love to play games. It is against my religion to ever throw out a paper without doing the crossword puzzle.

You met the love of your life, Allen Ludden, on a game show.

I was on "Password" the third week it was on, in 1961. After the show, he said, "I'm gonna marry that woman." And, boy, did he pursue a courtship. I lived in California, and he lived in New York, and I thought, "No way." I wasted a whole year that we could have been together saying "no."

What was the secret to your long marriage?

Allen's enthusiasm. He was into everything, and he was never blasé. He would call me from wherever he was working and say, "You wanna go out to dinner? You wanna have a date?" And I'd say "Sure!" Well, going out to dinner meant he'd stop on the way home and pick up a chicken and put it on the barbecue outside. There's a room behind the house, and we'd go out there and put on a stack of records, have our barbecue dinner and dance. We enjoyed each other.

Tell me how you got "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."

Grant Tinker -- Mary's then-husband -- and Allen were best friends. The four of us were very close. The fourth year, I got a call: "Would you be interested in doing next week's show? We have a script we think would be fun." It was the happy homemaker, the neighborhood nymphomaniac, Sue Ann Nivens. The casting director said, "It's a Betty White type: She's real sweet, but she's not what she seems." So they said, "Why don't you get Betty White?"

You could have retired long ago.

I'm the luckiest old broad on two feet. Half my life is my animal [benefit] work, and the other half is show business -- the two things I love the most. Should I quit, should I walk away from that? I don't think so.