Here’s a little secret that until now, only my husband and two friends knew about: I watch “The Golden Girls” almost every night.

Yep, after he’s gone to bed and I’m hanging out on the couch with the cats and the laptop, I flip over to Lifetime at 1 a.m. (or sometimes I’m already there to watch “Frasier”) for some quality cliché time with Blanche, Dorothy, Rose and Sophia.

(Lifetime will air a “Golden Girls” marathon of Sophia-centric episodes from noon-5 p.m. Friday - http://www.tvweek.com/news/2008/07/lifetime_honors_getty_with_gol.php).

There are lots of reasons why Sophia was always my favorite – not the least being that she was more than a reasonable facsimile of my deceased grandmother.

Nanny wasn’t from Sicily like Sophia, but her family did hail from the southern part of Italy. So every time those “Golden Girls” writers had Sophia put the Italian curse (or, the “malocchio,” as it’s known in its native tongue), on some unworthy suitor of Dorothy’s or, as in a recent repeat, had her walk around in a black dress and veil for days, mourning the lack of respect shown to her by her grandson, I had to laugh because I lived those moments with my grandmother.

I remember, like most people, being shocked to discover during the run of “The Golden Girls” that Estelle Getty was almost the same age as Bea Arthur, but made to look significantly older to play her mother.

I was also saddened the past several years every time the other Girls made appearances on some TV Land special, that Getty was never with them because she was too crippled by dementia.

Getty’s passing today made me melancholy (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/features/people/e3i7bf6cae6fb666e862b633ceeb20c9650), but her illness must have been incredibly difficult for her family to endure.

Finally, she’s at peace…and thanks to an endless cycle of re-runs, she’ll still be able to make us laugh.