Wally kurth Days anniversary mashup
Credit: NBC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection, Howard Wise/JPI, Paul Skipper/JPI, Jill Johnson/JPI

Take a look at Wally Kurth’s very first scene as Days of Our Lives‘ Justin on February 3rd, 1987, and you’ll be hard pressed to recognize the respectable Kiriakis family man of today. Oh, Kurth looked very much the same, of course, as he rolled around in bed with Justin’s beautiful Parisian paramour, but there’s no way that Justin would have ever cared about putting in a days’ work as Salem’s D.A.

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It was a hell of an introduction, as Justin bid his lady friend adieu by tossing her an expensive bracelet and saying he’d warned her he was going to leave once he graduated. Before he left, he put in a phone call to a place she had never heard of, “a quaint little hamlet called Salem.” Oh, and he suggested that maybe it was time for his lady love to get back to her husband.

Twitter account ThoseWereTheDays managed to dig up the scene for your enjoyment.

One of the reasons his first scene was so insulated was because, Kurth explained to Soap Opera Digest in a 2023 issue, he’d been hired last minute. It was so last minute, in fact, that the show had him come in to shoot on a Saturday — for the first and last time!

“It was only maybe a week, maybe even less than a week, that it aired,” he noted. “It was insane.”

But that first scene was an important one. It pretty much encapsulated Justin’s early template as a womanizer who reveled in the high life that being a Kiriakis afforded him. There was plenty to go around back then. When Justin first showed up in Salem, he and Victor were quite close, as they were the only family they had.

Justin’s parents were dead and Bo had yet to learn that he was Victor’s son. No one else was around, so the two Kiriakis men were like father and son. Victor, though, didn’t always approve of Justin’s lifestyle. Or his choice in women.

John Aniston, Wally Kurth, Victor, Justin, JPI, DAYS

Marriage was a minor inconvenience for Justin — something made clear, as we noted, from his first scene. And it’s something he happily ignored while carrying on an affair with the very much married Angelica Deveraux (played, at the time, by Jane Elliot, who went on to play mom Tracy to his Ned on General Hospital!).

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Still, as much as he enjoyed the ladies, Justin fell for Adrienne practically from the start. That particular romance, though, was always volatile. The two were married within the year, but she never approved of his ties to the illegal side of the Kiriakis business, and Victor didn’t approve of her.

The stress of it caused her to miscarry, and it just got worse when Justin blamed Adrienne for intentionally losing their child. Which is, if we’re being honest, a really vile thing to say. Justin had some growing up to do. He was clearly a far cry from the reliable man he is today, more interested in reveling in his family’s lucrative corruption than putting bad guys in jail.

“As human beings, we change,” Kurth told Digest, “and we look at the world through different lenses as we get older, and I feel so lucky that I am able to bring those real changes that happened to me to my characters. And hopefully, my characters have evolved just like I have.”

And evolve he has — though not beyond recognition. His third marriage to Adrienne ended in 2015 because he still hadn’t figured out how to keep it in his pants long enough to avoid an affair in Mumbai. But hey, at least that meant that he and Adrienne could round things out evenly afterwards with four marriages and four kids.

Yes, four kids.

There’s Sonny and Alexander (who, despite what the Kiriakis men think right now, is Justin’s son), of course, and adopted twin siblings, Joey and Victor. Last we saw, they moved to Texas just before Sonny was born in 1991. After that, Sonny seemed to be the only one Justin and Adrienne paid much attention to — until Alex made his return! Hey, maybe we’ll finally get to see Joey and Victor too some day!

Justin and Alex clink beer bottles while sitting on Alex's couch.

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These days, Justin’s married to Adrienne lookalike Bonnie. His and Adrienne’s fourth marriage came to an end when she sadly fell victim to Salem’s infamous time jump in 2020. He’s had to say a sad farewell to Victor, which was as crushing as losing a father. And then, shortly after, he lost Alex as his son thanks to Theresa and Konstantin’s meddling.

And though things between father and son may be rocky right now, someday, that relationship will be mended, mark our words. Justin’s not the womanizing ladies’ man of his youth anymore (Alex has taken that mantle from dear old dad, though he’s slowly shedding it), but he’s been a steady presence in Salem for ages. And that, Kurth told Digest, is thanks to the fans.

“I can’t say anything other than just thank you for watching,” he said of the Days of Our Lives audience. “I am just really grateful that they are still watching and somehow letting the powers-that-be know that I play a character they are interested in and care about and want to see more of.”

Keep track of who’s who and what’s going on in Salem right now with our Days of Our Lives 101 photo gallery below.