FOR ALL CONCERNED, IT WAS A night to remember. On Oct. 15, just hours before The Nanny's Fran Drescher was scheduled to appear at a Beverly Hills benefit, where she was to receive an award from Los Angeles's Friends of Sheba Medical Center for her donations to Jewish organizations, the publicist for the normally ebullient actress threatened to pull the star out. The reason? Journalists would be present. "Fran wanted no one near her," says Roger Neal, an organizer of the event. "Her publicist panicked." The edginess only escalated when guests began asking Drescher the whereabouts of her husband of 18 years, Nanny co-creator Peter Marc Jacobson. "It all sounded funny. She said he was working, but the show was on hiatus," says Neal. "It was a very tense evening."

Less than two weeks later, on Oct. 28, an explanation came forth: Drescher and Jacobson, both 39, announced that they had, for now, parted company. At the couple's two-bedroom bungalow in Los Angeles, neighbors say Drescher's car, a '92 Infiniti, has been missing from the driveway for nearly a month. "There is no third party involved," the couple's spokeswoman told USA Today. "Both Fran and Peter hope this separation will be a positive and growing experience." Neither has filed for divorce and, the spokeswoman added, "they are working through issues in therapy."

Just what those issues are is unclear. Long regarded as one of Hollywood's happiest pairs, the former high school sweethearts had as recently as September been seen together at the Emmys. And on the set of The Nanny, where both husband and wife have continued to collaborate—he as executive producer—only a handful had suspected anything was amiss. "It's been been business as usual here," says a source close to the show. "But this has been brewing for a while. I'd say this was 50-50 on the surprise meter."

Drescher, for her part, has alluded to marital conflict before. "[Peter's] got this Svengali thing," she said in the January issue of Redbook. "[Sometimes] something clicks in his head, and he starts to think I'm going to say the wrong thing or eat too much or wear the wrong thing, and it's weird, because I never do." But a close associate of Drescher's says the actress rarely plays the subordinate. "She's always nice to Peter," he says, "but sometimes she puts her foot down and says, 'I'm in charge!' " Still, over the years, the pair's devotion has never been in doubt. As Drescher told McCall's last year, "[Peter's] my lover, he's my jester, he's my king."

Indeed, up to now, their relationship has had a fairy-tale quality. The two first met as 15-year-olds at Hillcrest High School in Jamaica, N.Y. "She was walking up a stairwell and I thought, 'God, is she beautiful!' " Jacobson told PEOPLE in 1989. Discovering a shared passion for sitcoms—they spent their free time watching Father Knows Best and I Love Lucy—they both pursued acting careers after graduating in 1975. While Jacobson did theater and commercials, Drescher—first runnerup in the 1973 Miss Teen New York pageant—won small roles in Saturday Night Fever and American Hot Wax. In 1978 they wed. "Peter and I had been a couple for so many years," she wrote in her recent bestselling autobiography, Enter Whining, "that getting married seemed merely incidental."

Their happiness was cruelly tested eight years later when two intruders broke into their Los Angeles apartment, tied up Jacobson and raped Drescher and a friend. "There was a time when I thought my life was shattered," Drescher told the Chicago Sun-Times 10 years later. "But then I got psychological help, combined with the love of my husband." For Jacobson the incident only strengthened their bond. "I heard of another couple this happened to...it wasn't going well for them because the husband couldn't deal," he told PEOPLE in '89. "But you can't let [crime] destroy you or your marriage."

In 1991, Drescher starred in a CBS sitcom, Princess, that was pulled after five episodes. The next year, Drescher found herself seated next to Jeff Sagansky, then president of CBS Entertainment, on a flight to Paris. Furiously pitching her and Jacobson's idea for The Nanny, she deplaned with the plans laid for her new series, currently in its fourth season.

Now, with the couple's first two feature-film projects—The Beautician and the Beast and Schlepped Away—in the works for next year, their lives are, for the first time, out of sync. Still, there is reason for hope. "Sometimes we go into therapy a lot to work things through," Drescher told PEOPLE in August. "Sometimes it's smooth sailing. Other times it's a really bumpy road, and we just wade through it." Friends have their fingers crossed. "I think they're both wonderful people," says longtime pal Todd Graff, a screenwriter. "I can only hope everything works out."

JANICE MIN
ANNE-MARIE OTEY, CRAIG TOMASHOFF and LORENZO BENET in Los Angeles

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