ONLY IN HOLLYWOOD. NOT LONG AGO two stylish women passed each other on that toniest of shopping strips, Rodeo Drive. One ran after the other and, catching up, breathlessly said, "You don't know me, but I'm Bob's wife No. 3." Without even a hint of hostility, Bob's first wife responded, "He's had a brunette, a blonde and now another blonde. You're going to love your life."

More evidence of Tinseltown's tainted values? Hardly. The Bob in question is Bob Newhart, 63, married for nearly 30 years to the former Ginnie Quinn, 51, who calls him "the most patient, caring man I've ever known." Meeting on the drive had been two of Newhart's television wives, Suzanne Pleshette, 55, who played Emily on The Bob Newhart Show from 1972 to '78, and Carlene Watkins, 40, cast as Kaye McKay on the new CBS sitcom Bob. (The wife in between was Mary Frann, 49, Newhart spouse from 1982 to '90.)

It is the new television bride, Watkins, who, according to Ginnie, comes closest to capturing the real Newhart marriage. "I can see her putting Bob in his place, which I have been known to do from time to time," says Ginnie, a native New Yorker who met Newhart in 1961 on a blind date arranged by comic Buddy Hackett. "Carlene reminds me of a lot of girls grew up with, real down-to-earth." Says Watkins: "Ginnie and I share the same sense of humor, but when I first met her, my heart sank. She's such a natural beauty, and I'm the plain one."

For her part, the real Mrs. Newhart has at times compared herself—unfavorably—with Bob's TV wives. Pleshette's role as a teacher, Ginnie says, left her feeling insecure about her own stay-at-home role with kids Rob, now 29, Tim, 25, Jennifer, 21, and Courtney, 15. "We had three children at the start of that show," she says, "and then in the last year, we had our fourth. I was constantly running around, but because I didn't have a 9-to-5 job, I felt bad about myself."

By the start of Newhart, in which Bob, as Dick Loudon and Frann, as his wife, Joanna, played Vermont innkeepers, Ginnie was feeling fine about being a full-time homemaker but less satisfied with being a part-time crank. "Joanna was much nicer than me," she says with a laugh. "She never got angry about anything. I envied that, too, but the show always seemed a little surreal." Bob, in which Newhart plays the creator of the comic-book hero Mad Dog, might also be considered surreal, but so far Ginnie has no quibbles with Watkins's character, a museum gift-shop saleswoman and the only levelheaded force in her husband's life.

Truth is, Watkins wasn't always so well adjusted. The second of three sisters, she was raised in Houston, where her mother was an English teacher, her father a high school principal. "I was a malcontent," says Watkins. "I wanted to be unpopular. I apologize to everyone for how I was back then." Among other things, she claims, she was lazy—which led to her discovering acting while attending the University of Texas at Austin. "I figured may be acting classes started later in the day, like noon," she recalls, sitting in the book-lined living room of the elegant L.A. mansion she shares with her husband, TV writer-producer Ed. (he has spelled his name with a period since childhood) Weinberger and their sons, Jack, 8, and Sam, 5.

Soon after college, Watkins settled in New York City and, she says, "completely starved. I'd get mad if my roommate ate part of a sandwich I'd left in the refrigerator." Her diet improved when she moved to L.A. and became a contract player for Universal Studios, though her parts there were hardly nutritious. She served Robert Wagner a drink on Switch and sat next to James Garner on a bus on The Rockford Files. Then, in 1981, she won a lead role in Best of the West. Though the sitcom was canceled after only a season, that was long enough for Watkins and producer Weinberger, whose credits include Taxi and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, to get a romance rolling. They married in 1984, and Watkins kept acting part-time, slowing down three years ago when it was discovered that Sam had diabetes. "We weren't prepared for that," Watkins says. "One day he was fine, and the next he wasn't. It forces you to grow up."

Not until this year did Watkins feel comfortable pursuing her career full-time. Fortuitously, Sam was attending the same preschool as the children of Cheri and Bill Steinkellner, who, along with Phoef Sutton, are the creators of Bob. Watching Watkins serve as the energetic hostess at the school's auction, they became convinced she was the actress to play Newhart's wife. They invited her to audition and, says Cheri, "There was this nice warmth between her and Bob from the start." Watkins agrees: "I immediately felt Bob was like my real husband. They're both on the shy side. I wanted to throw my arms around Bob the way I wanted to do when I was getting to know Ed."

Ginnie, too, sometimes feels the boundaries between life and TV blur. "I ask myself," she says, " 'Have they been sneaking around our house filming us?' " Case in point: 21-year-old Trisha McKay (played by Cynthia Stevenson) asks her dad on Bob what he thinks of her new outfit. "Wonderful," he responds, never lifting his eyes from the newspaper. "There are days," says Ginnie, when Newhart's daughter Courtney "will come down in the morning to talk to Bob and she'll come to me and say, 'Mom, Dad isn't looking up from the paper!' "

Ginnie insists that her husband's quirks could fill the McKay comedy mill for seasons to come. Six months ago the Newharts moved into a new Bel Air home reportedly worth $4 million (their previous house, also in Bel Air, was sold to soap star Deidre Hall and husband, novelist-producer Steve Sohmer). The move, says Ginnie, "was a revelation, because I saw the sort of things he had saved all these years, like old checkbooks he'd never used. What amazed me is how he took the time to put these things in a box and find a hiding place for them."

Turning to Bob, who is sitting on the couch beside her, grinning sheepishly, she says, "That's when I don't think I know you." Suddenly, Ginnie, who says she has kept a low profile because "we had to give up a lot of privacy over the years," seems delighted to go public at last as New-hart's real wife. He cheats at crossword puzzles, she says, and "has no idea about anything going on in this house. He'll say, 'Where are we keeping the silverware this week?' I'll say, 'The same place it has been for 20 years.' He's oblivious."

Newhart agrees but adds with a chuckle, "That's because I've got bigger things on my mind. I've got to figure out how to tackle the problem with the Russians, how we can get all those independent states to get along."

And if Watkins is trying to figure out how to get along with her small-screen spouse, there's advice aplenty from his other mates, both fictitious and real. "Just keep him happy," says Frann. "Just be honest with him," suggests Ginnie. And, adds Pleshette, just don't look too closely at his clothes. Bob, she says, "eats like a kid in high school. He'd come back from lunch, I'd see the stains on his shirt and say, 'Oh, chocolate milk and chili dog today.' " She laughs and offers a final fond remembrance: "Bob is a Twinkie kind of guy, definitely."

SHELLEY LEVITT
CRAIG TOMASHOFF in Los Angeles