Sheriff Andy Taylor was a widower. The show never said exactly how his late wife died, though it’s implied to have been either in childbirth or not long after. Still, it was the only way we were going to get a single parent on TV in those days. Opie’s mother would not be returning. Andy dated, and he worked, and he was a father for his young son. It was a time of many rural-set shows; the Westerns, of course, but also things like Green Acres and Lassie. And, of course, The Beverly Hillbillies, its own thing. Some of them would be just as famous as The Andy Griffith Show; others would definitely not. But perhaps none of their leads were as iconic as Andy.
Andy Griffith seems to have actually been born Andy, in the town of Mount Airy, North Carolina. His father was a carpenter; his mother was a homemaker. In his first few months, they didn’t have a home of their own and stayed with relatives, with young Andy sleeping in a drawer. He’s one of many people who, as a teenager, fell in love with the creative arts. He initially went to UNC to be a Moravian preacher, but he changed his degree to music. He was also acting by then, and by 1953 made a huge hit with his comedic performance “What It Was, Was Football.”
He acknowledged that he was giving a great performance in A Face in the Crowd, but he hated playing such a deeply unpleasant character. No Time For Sergeants was much more his speed. He did an appearance on Make Room For Daddy that was a back-door pilot for The Andy Griffith Show, a show Griffith helped develop. Mayberry isn’t Mount Airy, but Griffith himself freely admitted that they two might have a little overlap. There is now a museum dedicated to Griffith there. Presumably he’s now famous enough that there would be even if the town bore no resemblance to Mayberry whatesoever, though.
He is also, of course, Ben Matlock. Or, as the character is called in this household—and possibly yours as well—MAAAAAATLOOOOOOOOOCK! There’s a reason he’s Grandpa Simpson’s favourite character; possibly Griffith himself would acknowledge that there’s something about Matlock that appeals to the older demographic. My own generation is getting drawn into the show ourselves now, only it’s the Kathy Bates version. He explained that Matlock was not, in fact, a simple country lawyer, being from just outside Atlanta, but he would use your belief that he was if it would get him an advantage in the case.
IMDb lists three people as having been his best friend over the years. That’s fine; I have multiple best friends myself. But they were all people he worked with while young and remained friends with for decades—Don Knotts, Dick Van Dyke, and R. G. Armstrong. He apparently also bought Ron Howard his first movie camera as a ninth birthday present, and they, too, remained friends until Griffith’s death. By all accounts he was a very nice guy, which makes it depressing how many death threats he got for making commercials supporting the Affordable Care Act. This is why we can’t have nice things.