Barbara divorced Paul Gilbert, who died in 1976. In Melissa Gilbert's autobiography, Prairie Tale, it is revealed that due to his suffering from constant pain, he took his own life. Barbara then married Harold Abeles, and together they had Sara Abeles, who changed her name to Sara Gilbert, even though she has no blood relation to Melissa and Jonathan's adopted father, who died one year and two weeks after she was born. In Gilbert's autobiography, she writes that when Jonathan was in his early 20s, he moved away from California and she has had no relationship with him since then, for reasons supposedly unknown to her. She writes that he is a stockbroker living in New York City.