Carly Tenney

When she first arrived in Oakdale from Musselshell, Montana, Carly was a schemer who attempted to break up her wealthy half-sister, Rosanna Cabot's engagement to Mike Kasnoff. Dirt poor and unloved outcast Carly was jealous of the half sister who had the advantage of their mother's love, social acceptance, and a hefty inheritance. Carly became pregnant with Mike's child even though he was engaged to Rosanna, but Carly eventually lost the baby. Rosanna responded by promising Carly $50 million if she was married to someone other than Rosanna's fiancé, Mike, and had a baby with her new husband to by year's end (1998). Carly left town to mourn the loss of her unborn baby, became involved in a dangerous business deal in Hong Kong.

Carly eventually returned to Montana, where she met and generated major sparks with former FBI agent Jack Snyder. When she returned to Oakdale, Carly was determined to meet Rosanna's stipulations and get her hands on the $50 million dollars. To that end, she romanced and eventually married an unsuspecting Detective Hal Munson when Jack was injured and clearly out of the marrying and baby making sweepstakes. Eventually Hal caught on and divorced Carly, but she was already pregnant. Still determined to get Rosanna's money, Carly claimed her child was fathered by a not so anonymous sperm donor, John Dixon, and not her ex husband. She married John Dixon to ensure the $50 million trust fund, gave birth to a healthy baby assisted by Jack who just happened to be on hand at the time, and, with the help of her scheming cousin Molly Conlon, switched the paternity results of the baby she was carrying (who turned out to be Hal's). Carly and John divorced, Carly kept the money and shared custody of her baby with John, and she was set to pursue Jack, but then was blackmailed into another loveless marriage by Jack's brother Brad Snyder, who learned the truth of Parker's paternity from Molly. Brad attempted to win Carly's heart, to no avail, because she still pined for Jack.

Carly and Jack finally gave into their passion when they came together for a secret tryst and declared their love. Carly decided to divorce Jack's brother Brad so that she would be free to be with Jack, and it seemed that she was about to finally have everything she wanted- her son, her true love, and lots of money.  The truth of Parker's paternity was revealed in a scene of public humiliation orchestrated by Brad, who had pretended to go along with the divorce with no hard feelings, but was secretly seething over the demise of his loveless marriage to Carly. Carly lost the $50 million and custody of her son, as well as the respect of nearly everyone in Oakdale, effectively becoming the town pariah; she also lost (or so it seemed at the time) any chance she might have had with the one man she truly loved, Jack Snyder, who was hurt that he was kept in the dark about Parker's paternity and the real reason behind her marriage to Brad.

Slowly Jack and Carly started finding their way back together.  Jack made a bet with Carly that she couldn’t go for a month without telling a lie. On Christmas, Jack announced to Carly that she won the bet and he rewarded her with a marriage proposal and a new house. Sadly the happiness would not last long. Soon after becoming engaged, Carly started receiving threats from a man named Philips who knew her in Hong Kong.  Just as she was to marry Jack, Philips warned Carly that if she refused to return to her former Hong Kong employer, Jack and Parker would get hurt. Afraid for their lives, Carly sadly told Jack that she couldn't marry him, abandoned Parker, and left Oakdale with Philips.

After months of trying to contact Jack, Carly finally found help from Craig Montgomery, one of Winston Lowe's business associates and Carly stole Craig's airline tickets to fly back to Oakdale, after learning that Parker had been injured. When she arrived she told Jack and everyone the truth: Winston Lowe was her husband. Winston had blackmailed her into marriage and she had been told by a lawyer they were divorced, but they weren’t.  Nobody and especially Jack would not believe her and once again Carly had to start over.

Carly has not really been able to get her fashion career off the ground, thought at a couple of points things did briefly seem promising, but her involvement with roguish Craig Montgomery undermined what would otherwise have been a career breakthrough in 2002.

Around this same time, vindictive Barbara Ryan and her husband James Stenbeck had Carly and two other women (Emily Stewart and Rose D'Angelo) kidnapped and carted off to a "spa" in a remote region of Europe, where they were held captive and forced to be research subjects in a deranged scientist's experiments in manipulating the aging process. The women were eventually rescued by Jack, Hal and Paul Ryan (Barbara's son).

Carly finally married Jack Snyder in 2002, though it was a stormy relationship. On the eve of their wedding, in a moment of drunken abandonment after a fight with Jack over Craig Montgomery, her shady business partner, she slept with her ex, Mike Kasnoff, which later caused considerable drama for Carly and Jack, as well as for Mike and Carly's cousin, Molly (who was seeing Mike at that point). Though they survived that ordeal, they also had to contend with Jack's obsessed, psychotic ex-wife, Julia Lindsey, who had in the past kidnapped Jack, raped him, attempted to kill him, and escaped town. A "cured" Julia arrived shortly after Jack and Carly's wedding with her therapist and a baby in tow, claiming it was the product of that rape. Jack and Carly discovered that Julia had stolen that baby, and she escaped once again. Carly soon discovered she was pregnant with Jack's baby...or possibly Mike's, from their one night stand. She tried to lie about the paternity and Jack found out, but he eventually forgave Carly and vowed to love the baby no matter who the biological father turned out to be, and after the birth of the baby girl, Sage, they renewed their vows in the place they had met many years ago- Montana. After the ceremony, Carly and Jack received the paternity results- Sage was Jack's daughter after all.

A year later, Jack would find himself in a perilous situation while trying to protect Carly's cousin Molly. Jack took the criminal, Starziak, away himself. However, in the car, a fight ensued and the car went into the water! Everyone presumed Jack had died, except for Parker.  Parker finally convinced Carly that Jack was alive and with his help she found Jack at a motel.  However Jack had started a new life with Julia Larrabee and her son JJ because after the accident he had developed amnesia.  Jack took Julia aside and demanded the truth. Caught, Julia tearfully confessed that she'd learned of Jack's identity much earlier but kept quiet since she'd fallen in love with him. Jack forgave Julia. So, Jack went back to Oakdale, and brought Julia and JJ, with him. Knowing that Jack considered Julia his real wife, Carly went to court and had Jack declared incompetent and had him placed in her custody. After weeks of Jack being hostile towards Carly, she tried to make him remember their past by tricking him into going to Montana. There she discussed their past and started reciting their wedding vows. Jack started remembering them too and his entire memory came flooding back!  Jack still had a problem since he cared for both women. As Jack struggled with his choice, in the end Carly decided to make it easy for him and signed divorce papers. However, to her delight, Jack had already made his decision and tore them up. Months later, Julia was tragically murdered by her ex-husband, Les, and Jack and Carly were granted guardianship of JJ.

In 2004, Carly's sister Rosanna, whom she had finally forgiven and formed a sisterly bond with after having fought bitterly with one another for most of their lives, was involved in an accident which put her into a coma (from which she still has not emerged). At the time of the accident, Rosanna had been attempting to adopt the illegitimate baby of homeless teenager, Gwen Norbeck. Carly and Jack decided to take the baby and raise him until such time as Rosanna could emerge from her coma and take him. In the mean time, however, Gwen had decided that she wanted her biological baby back, and Carly and Gwen spent the next several months battling fiercely over the child, with Carly drugging Gwen (cleverly arranging so that town matriarch Nancy Hughes would witness the events) to make her look like an unfit mother; the scheme backfired, and Gwen was awarded custody, but not before it could be revealed that Carly and Gwen were in fact half-sisters (they shared the same father, Ray Tenney). It was later revealed, however, that the baby thought to be Gwen's was actually the child of Craig Montgomery and Jennifer Munson, whom Craig had switched at birth; Gwen's baby, Billy, had in fact died shortly after birth in causes attributed to poor pre-natal care. This trauma brought Carly and Gwen closer, where they were able to put the bitterness and animosity of the custody battle behind them and love one another as sisters. The strain of the sisters' custody fight took its toll on Carly's relationship with Jack, however. In an uncharacteristically shady move, Jack buried evidence that would have implicated Carly as having drugged Gwen, and when this was found out, Jack was suspended from the police force. Carly tried to help Jack win his job back through an ill-conceived, convoluted scheme, but it only exacerbated the problem, and eventually the marriage collapsed. They separated in early 2006, and though each of them indicated at various points that they regretted splitting, they suffered from mixed signals and bad timing, and have not reunited. In the fall of 2006, Carly began a professional relationship with Australian bad boy, Simon Frasier, which soon evolved into an affair. This put her at odds with her friend (and Simon's true love) Katie Peretti, and Katie's husband (and Carly's ex) Mike Kasnoff.

In October 2006, after months of creating a building, Carly and Simon found themselves with a lack of finance. They needed to find a way to make money fast, or else they would be unable to complete their building, and would have lost everything. At first, Simon went to a loan shark. However, unable to give back the money, they were now in an even messier situation. Simon, being an ex-con, was quick to come up with a scheme. He came up with the idea to steal the crown jewels of Prince Adolpho (a visiting monarch) from around the neck of one of Simon's former lovers. The plan worked, and they were able to finish the project - with money left over. No one suspected a thing for months...until Simon gave Carly a diamond from the necklace to wear around her neck. Katie, whom now despised Carly, saw this, and wrote about how they stole the jewels. The police - including Carly's ex-husband, Jack, who still secretly loved her and tried to warn her that she was going to pay for Simon's crimes if she didn't cut him loose- were now hot on the trail of Simon Frasier. After trying to hide Carly's diamond, the police found it. They temporarily arrested Carly, on grounds that she tried to help Simon escape. However, just as Carly felt she was never going to see Simon again, he showed up and freed her. The two began to fly to Canada, but Carly forced them to turn around so she could say goodbye to her children. When she arrived, she found Jack. After arguing with him over whether or not she should turn herself in, Jack realized the best thing he could do for Carly was to let her go live her new life with Simon, so he came up with a plan. Jack allowed Simon to hit him over the head and handcuff him to a chair, so it would look like they escaped. Carly and Simon headed back to the plane, where she professed that though she would always love Jack, her future was now with Simon.

Carly returned to Oakdale in May 2007 to reunite with her children. She was dismayed to learn that after she was forced to abandon her children to flee the law with Simon, a lonely Jack had befriended and begun dating her nemesis, Katie Peretti. Carly eventually realized she wanted her old life back with Jack and their children, but bitter Jack was now determined not to let Carly back into his heart, claiming he preferred his new, baggage free relationship with Katie. Katie and Jack's relationship proceeded at lightening speed, propelled by Carly's return to town as Jack attempted to bury his feelings for his ex, and Jack proposed to Katie.

Carly got into a car accident with Sage on the way to Jack and Katie's engagement party, and at the hospital, the doctor said that she will need a neurosurgeon. The week of September 17th she finds out she has a brain lesion and only has several month to live; she lies to her friends and family about her condition. Brad, Jack's brother, stumbles upon the truth of her condition and was for a while, the only one to know of her illness.

Following the discovery of her illness, Carly was continually accused of causing problems for attention and to further disrupt Jack and Katie's relationship. It wasn't until the day of Jack and Katie's wedding that her condition comes out into the open.

After gazing at the ticking clock on the wall, Carly stood and left her home. In Old Town, she looks at her reflection before collapsing to the ground. People crowd around her, rousing her; she has no idea who she is. An officer arrives and recognizing her, tells her who she is. He mentions Jack which restores her memory. The officer takes her to the station, refusing to let her leave alone. At a loss, she calls Brad, unknowingly interrupting Jake and Katie's wedding. Brad hurries to her aid, bringing the wedding to a temporary halt.

Brad finally convinces Carly to go, reluctantly, to the hospital for further testing. After all this, Brad returns to the wedding, which has resumed without him. He arrives among much irritation, and endures Jack's tirade before telling him that Carly is very ill. At first Jack is reluctant to believe him but finally accepts it and goes to see her at the hospital. There he discovers the seriousness of her illness and vows to her to be there for her, despite the fact that he has a newlywed wife.

In the following weeks, Carly slowly reveals to her loved ones her illness, all the while secretly trying to cope with the idea of leaving her children, family and friends behind. Jack is persistent in his support no matter how much Carly tells him to leave and be with Katie.

Parker, unable to accept that his mother is dying, attempts to find an alternative method of medication that is experimental and requires a trip to Berlin. He insists that even if it's a small chance it's worth it and that if she asked Rosanna to pay for it, she would. After reading about this alternative, Carly explains that the tumors they are experimenting on are completely different than hers.

Jack talks to Parker, explaining that when he says things like 'She's not that sick', it hurts Carly and makes it all harder. He then takes Parker to Carly's doctor in the hopes that if he sees the medical facts he will be able to accept it. Following this visit with the doctor, upon returning home, Parker claims that he wants Jack to adopt him, something that Carly has been wanting for years. She tearfully embraces her son and sends him back to school.

A few moments later she passes out into Jack's arms. He carries her to the couch, awakening her. She begins to cry and say that she just wants more time. Jack, suspicious about the severity of her symptoms, begs her to tell him what's going on and if she's hiding something from him. She reveals that the tumor is growing more rapidly than expected; her symptoms are that of the final stages of her illness.

Jack and Carly's feelings for each other become stronger as they spend more time with each other. Jack is abandoning Katie more and more which is making there new marriage start on shaky ground. Katie's jealous in a way of Carly and Jack spending so much time together. Carly ask Jack for one final request. One more time to feel loved and to be held. She then feels embarrassed but Jack still kisses her.  As Jack and Carly grow closer, Carly gets the news that she was misdiagnosed and is not dying.  Though she tries to tell Jack several times but she never gets the words out.  She decides if she can get him to realize how much he loves her, it won’t matter when he learns about the misdiagnosis.  Following a trip to Montana, where Jack and Carly slept together, Katie tells Jack she wants an annulment.  Jack then proposed to Carly.  Feeling confident, at the ceremony Carly gives Jack the good news, but he leaves her at the church when he realized she has known.

Now Carly is trying to rebuild her life and her relationship with her kids.  In a strange circumstance she became co-owner of Metro with Kit Fowler. As she and Kit were just starting their business, Kit’s boyfriend Sam showed up and also came to the rescue on opening night on New Year ’s Eve.  Jack and Carly are once again becoming closer as they work together for their family and in particular to deal with increasing problems with Parker.  Carly feels though that she has lost her last chance for happiness with Jack.

 

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