When Brad Whitford and Jane Kaczmarek go out, everyone seems to know him as Josh Lyman from The West Wing. No one knows his wife.

        “It hurt my feelings that nobody was recognizing me,” says Ms. Kaczmarek, who plays Lois, the mother always screaming at her sons on Fox's Malcolm in the Middle.

        “Then I realized that maybe they were afraid of me. They thought I was going to yell at them,” says the actress, whose series returns for a second season today (8:30 p.m., Channels 19, 45).

        After toiling for years rather anonymously in show business, the couple find themselves simultaneously on two hit shows. He's the conscientious White House deputy chief of staff on TV's best drama; she's the most realistic mother since Roseanne on one of TV's best comedies.

        “Brad and I look at each other and say, "If this were in a movie script, you'd say, "Oh, no. They've got to change that because it's unbelieveable.' It's just UN-believeable. It's unfathomable,” she says.

        “It's competely shocking to us,” Mr. Whitford says. “We're humbled because we know how difficult it is . . . to get a call back (for an audition), let alone a job, let alone a show that goes (on the air), let alone a show that people embrace.”

        Both are 15-year overnight successes. Before being summoned to the White House drama, the 41-year-old Mr. Whitford had appeared in The Equalizer, Adventures in Babysitting, Billy Madison, RoboCop 3, NYPD Blue, ER and ABC's short-lived Secret Lives of Men. He met West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin in the Broadway production of his A Few Good Men.

        Ms. Kaczmarek, 44, has had parts on St. Elsewhere, Scarecrow & Mrs. King, Hill Street Blues, Remington Steele, L.A. Law, Equal Justice, The Practice, Pleasantville, Frasier and Felicity.

        “Brad and I have been slugging away. We'd take any job that comes along,” she says. “So the fact that both of these shows have been so acclaimed is even more of a coincidence. It's serendipitous.”

        Malcolm in the Middle, about blue-collar parents with a genius son (Frankie Muniz), came along when the frustrated actress was ready to quit show business and have a second baby.

        “She was done. She was tired of driving around town, trying to make people like her (in auditions),” says Mr. Whitford, who met his future wife in 1990 on a blind date arranged by Kate Burton (Richard's daughter), who was Ms. Kaczmarek's roommate at Yale Drama School. They married in 1992.

        One April week in 1999, their lives changed forever: NBC bought The West Wing series, Fox ordered Malcolm,and Ms. Kaczmarek learned she was pregnant again.

        “It's really satisfying because I've been watching her, like, hit the ball out of the park in theaters for 10 years, and now all of the sudden it's a big surprise for everyone,” Mr. Whitford says.

        Her strong personality was perfect for no-nonsense Lois, mother of four trouble-making boys and wife to a man (Bryan Cranston) who likes to toss stuffed animals, lunch boxes and basketballs into a chipper shredder.

        In the second-season premiere today, she yells at her sons for getting the family kicked out of a waterpark and spends the rest of the episode screaming at police and road crews cleaning up a nasty truck wreck which closed the highway.

        “Lois is not the wise, nodding influence behind her man,” says Ms. Kaczmarek, who loved watching TV mom Donna Reed as a child.

        “I've always been tall and strong voiced, and I've always been playing somebody's mom . . . I'm the bossy one. I've always been the bossy girl.”

        She means always. Before she married, her mom warned Mr. Whitford “that I was a bossy girl,” she says.

        The Malcolm family may be unconventional, but she'll never call it dysfunctional.

        “This is one of the most highly functioning families. They have dinner together every night . . . and (the kids) don't get away with anything,” says Ms. Kaczmarek, the oldest of four children from Milwaukee.

        “The fact that they have one bathroom is a testimony to huge function. Do you know how organized you have to be? I grew up in a house with one bathroom, and boy you have to work together as a family — and forgive, forgive, forgive,” she says.

        One parallel to their TV success is that each show is the vision of just one man. Former child star Linwood Boomer (Adam Kendall from Little House on the Prairie) created Malcolm based loosely on his childhood. Mr. Sorkin writes every word of The West Wing, the Emmy-winning drama inspired by his film, The American President.

        One big difference, however, is that Mr. Sorkin's script pages often arrive hours before a scene will be shot.

        “The fax machine goes on at midnight (in our home), and Brad gets up and memorizes for hours,” the actress says. “Brad did A Few Good Men on Broadway. Aaron knows that Brad is a good voice for Aaron. You can see on the show that Brad is really such a central character on that show.”

        His bossy wife has jokingly scolded him by saying: “Stop memorizing those lines so well! If you go in unprepared, then he won't write for you so much, and you can be home more!”
       

Family that functions

               They live close enough to the Warner Bros. studio in Burbank, Calif., that Mr. Whitford can run home for dinner with his wife and two children, Frances, 2 1/4, and George, 10 months. At nights he does the family grocery shopping online.

        “Our weekends are so precious. I'm lucky that I'm married to a man who adores family life,” says Ms. Kaczmarek, who spent her spring “hiatus” break from shooting “potty-training my daughter and doing a jigsaw puzzle. That was heaven,” she says.

        Though Malcolm was instantly hailed as a hit in January, she was oblivious to the critics' buzz. The show premiered as her son, born one month premature (7 pounds, 10 ounces), came home from the hospital.

        “I will always remember (Malcolm) starting, and this huge success it was having, with finding out that my baby was going to be OK,” she says.

        “People say this all the time: "All you want is for your kid to be healthy.' They aren't kidding. The greatest gift you can have — better than any ratings — is a healthy baby.”

Send us memories of Pops maestro Kunzel
Married, with stardom
Reading grad acquiring a most-recognizable face
Pig Parade: One Thousand One Arabiham Nights
DAUGHERTY: Thank veterans by voting
DEMALINE: City panel misses mark on advocacy
Get to It
Volunteer with a mission
A cappella octet finds a new home
CSO harpist takes center stage
Portraits capture lost cul ture
Smith's snappy melodies sound alike