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Kayla Brady
Mary-beth-evans-days-of-our-lives-ch-nbc
Days of our Lives
Portrayed by Catherine Mary Stewart (1982–83)
Mary Beth Evans (1986–present)
Rhonda Aldrich (1989, temp)
Current status Present; Contract
Duration 1986–1992, 2006–present
First appearance January 18, 1982
Created by Pat Falken Smith
Introduced by Betty Corday
Al Rabin
Profile
Fullname Kayla Caroline Brady Johnson
Nickname(s) Sweetness (by Steve)
Alias(es) Kayla Deveraux
Kayla Johnson
Sister Mary Elizabeth
Namesake(s) Caroline Brady
Gender Female
Born April 19th, 1964
Age 60
Occupation Doctor
Residence Salem, Illinois
Relationships
Family Brady family
Johnson family (marriage)
Parents Shawn Brady
Caroline Brady
Siblings Roman Brady
Kimberly Brady
Bo Brady(half)
Frankie Brady (adoptive)
Max Brady (adoptive)
Spouses Jack Deveraux (1987-88)
Steve Johnson (1988–90)
Steve Johnson (1990–2012)
Steve Johnson (2017–19)
Romances Tim Casey
Steve Johnson
(soulmate)
Mike Horton
David Banning
Chris Kositchek
Shane Donovan
Justin Kiriakis (2019-20)
Children Joey Johnson
Stephanie Johnson
Tripp Dalton (step)
Grandparents Peter Brady
Great-grandparents Patrick Aloysius Brady
Nora Molly Brady
Aunts and uncles Eric Brady I
Molly Brady
Colleen Brady
Nieces and nephews Eric Brady
Rex Brady
Andrew Donovan IV
Shawn Douglas Brady (half)
Zack Brady(half)
Carrie Brady
Sami Brady
Cassie Brady
Chelsea Brady (half)
Theresa Donovan
Ciara Brady (half)
First cousins Colin Murphy
Ryan Brady
Other relatives Will Horton (grandnephew)
Johnny DiMera (grandnephew)
Allie Horton (grandniece)
Sydney DiMera (grandniece)
Noah Reed (grandnephew)
Claire Brady (half-grandniece)
Tate Black (grandnephew)
Emily Lockhart (grandniece)
Mackenzie Horton(grandniece)
Arianna Horton (great-grandniece)

Kayla Caroline Brady Johnson M.D. (formerly Johnson, Deveraux) is a character from the soap opera Days of Our Lives., currently portrayed by Mary Beth Evans.

Casting

The role was originated on January 18, 1982 by actress Catherine Mary Stewart who played the role until December 14, 1983. The role is replaced in 1986 by actress Mary Beth Evans. Evans is most recognizable in the role as Kayla. She played the role from May 23, 1986 to May 26, 1992. Mary Beth Evans returned to play Kayla on June 12, 2006. She announced her departure from the serial on February 17, 2009, and was dropped off canvas.

She returned to play Kayla in a recurring capacity from June 18 to 29, 2010 and September 23, 2010 to February 15, 2011. In December 2011, Evans began appearing on a regular basis in a recurring capacity. In May 2015, Evans announced she had been put back on contract with Days of Our Lives.

Storylines

Kayla is first introduced to the show in 1982 as Roman Brady's younger sister and a nurse who works at University Hospital. Kayla shares a past relationship with Mike Horton, and also dates David Banning. She is involved with Chris Kositchek and loses her virginity to him. However, Kayla leaves town in 1983 when Chris can not commit to her.

Kayla returns to Salem in 1986 with Mary Beth Evans in the role after Steve Johnson is hired to scare her away from Cleveland. Accepting a job offer from Tom Horton, Kayla establishes a low income clinic on the riverfront and continues to cross paths with Steve. The two help orphans Max Brady and Frankie Brady find a home with Kayla's parents, and later go on the run together when Steve's former paramour Britta Englund is killed. When Orpheus kidnaps Marlena, the "Three Knives" tattoos that Steve, Bo, and Britta share become an important clue in the story, and Steve and Kayla travel to Stockholm and help Roman unravel the mystery.

In 1987, Kayla helps Adrienne Johnson find work at the Emergency Center, not knowing she is actually Steve's long lost sister. Steve and Ava are torn apart when Steve tries to take the fall for a traumatized Adrienne's killing of their abusive father, Duke, but her memories of the incident return before he could be sentenced.

Later in the year, Kayla goes on the run with Steve when he is framed of the shooting of Senator Harper Deveraux. After returning to Salem, Steve and Kayla finally make love for the first time. After Steve is cleared, Harper hires Kayla to be his son Jack Deveraux's nurse. An old friend of Kayla's, Jack falls in love with her. Steve knows how happy Kayla makes a dying Jack, who is secretly another sibling whom Jo Johnson had placed up for adoption. Devastated by Steve's rejection, Kayla marries Jack in the hopes it would help his health. Led to believe that Kayla knows the secret of Jack's past, Harper begins poisoning her. Steve rescues her when she is near death. Though the two are reunited, they agree not to tell Jack until after his election to the town council. However, Jack discovers the affair the night of the election and rapes Kayla in a fit of rage. Kayla charges Jack with rape, but thanks to a plea deal, Jack receives only a slap on the wrist, even after Kayla confronts him on the stand.

Kayla loses her hearing during an attack at the loft, and can not remember her attacker's face. Steve learns sign language to communicate with her, and Kim works with her to help her memory. During this period, Jack finally grants her the divorce, but Kayla isn't sure if she can marry Steve without her hearing. Kayla finally remembers that Harper was the man who attacked her, just before being taken hostage by him at the loft. After that experience, Kayla undergoes a risky surgery to restore her hearing and agrees to marry Steve.

After their marriage, Steve and Kayla almost adopt a young deaf boy named Benji, who is eventually found to be Stefano DiMera's son. Later, Steve helps Nick Corelli hide from the police. Nick gifts Steve and Kayla with a mansion for their trouble. In an old trunk in the mansion's attic, Steve and Kayla find an old civil war diary and spend time reliving the love story of Emily and Gideon. Later, while helping Marcus search for his own past in Charleston, SC, they visit significant sites in the diary. Marcus' search for his past leads to an involvement with a corrupt preacher. Steve agrees to undergo plastic surgery fix his eye, in order to infiltrate the preacher's camp for the ISA as Daniel Lucas.

After the ISA operation ends with the appearance of Shane's death, life is upended for Steve and Kayla yet again when Marina Toscano appears, claiming to be Steve's presumed dead first wife. Knowing she is pregnant but not yet having told Steve, Kayla encourages Steve to help Marina, in hopes that the old entanglements can be resolved. Marina and Steve travel to Italy to retrieve the key, where Kayla catches them in an apparently compromising situation. Steve's eye socket is damaged again in a fight, and he decides to start wearing the patch again. Back in Salem, Steve works to regain Kayla's trust, and is shocked to learn from Jack that she is pregnant. Kayla and Marina argue in her hotel room, where Marina is later found dead.

Kayla is kidnapped by Victor Kiriakis, and released in exchange for the key. Steve and Kayla plan another wedding, as their marriage had been invalidated by the fact of Marina, but Kayla is arrested during the ceremony for her murder. Kayla gives birth to Stephanie Johnson after going into labor on the witness stand. Convicted of murder, Kayla is sent to prison. At first she tries to keep Stephanie with her, but then decides that prison was no place for a baby. Sheila the nanny, who had become obsessed with the baby, kidnaps Stephanie and takes her to Australia. Upon hearing of Stephanie's kidnapping, Kayla escapes from prison, and she and Steve follow Sheila to Australia where they manage to get their baby back. After word came that Kayla had been cleared of Marina's murder, they return to Salem, where they are finally legally married.

In the fall of 1990, Steve decides to become a police officer. He is injured in a boat explosion, rigged by Lawrence Alamain and meant for Bo Brady. Steve begins to recover, but is "killed" when Lawrence has his IV poisoned. Kayla moves in with Shane Donovan for protection, and the two eventually begin a relationship. Things become complicated when Kim returns to town in 1991 to find her sister and ex-husband living together, and when circumstances lead her to become involved with Lawrence Alamain.

Shane is paralyzed in the line of duty. At first he refuses to have the surgery to regain the use of his legs, but Kayla helps him recover as their relationship deepened. However, Kayla decides to move to Los Angeles in the spring of 1992 to start a new life for her and her daughter.

In 2006, Kayla, now a doctor, returns to Salem for Frankie Brady and Jennifer Horton's wedding, having completed medical school in Los Angeles. She had been planning to go to Africa with Doctors Without Borders, but is shocked when Steve appears at the church. He doesn't remember his past, and she is devastated to think that he doesn't know who she is and to watch him take up with Billie Reed. A series of events, including their daughter's race car crash and a stay in quarantine after being exposed to a toxin at the hospital, help slowly bring them back together. Eventually, a trip to a cabin where they once hid out together on the run sparks Steve's memory to return in its entirety, and the two are reunited.

In 2007, Benjy Hawk (DiMera) (who's forced by EJ DiMera) returns to Salem with a tarot card that turns Steve into a DiMera soldier. It turns out that Stefano and EJ had tortured him during his missing years. Due to Steve's programming, Kayla is forced into removing John Black's kidney so an ailing Stefano can have it. Steve is committed to the mental hospital, and Kayla works to help him recover, despite his resistance. When his programming is again activated by EJ in order to have him kill Bo on Tinda Lau, Kayla is finally able to break through to him, and they spend some time on the island recovering.

Back in Salem, Steve and Kayla begin to discuss the idea of having another baby. When Philip Kiriakiss son Tyler Wilkens is abandoned anonymously at the hospital by Philip and Mimi's surrogate, Kayla and Steve take him in and care for him as Pocket. After Steve takes Stefano hostage in retaliation for Benjy's murder when the vendetta heats up, social services take Pocket away when he becomes ill. Steve and Kayla are accused of poisoning him by Philip, but it turns out to be a rare genetic disorder. Steve and Kayla and Philip all decide it was in his best interest to go live with another foster family.

In 2008, Kayla and Steve support Stephanie after it was revealed she was raped by Ford Decker. They travel to Ireland to help Shawn meet with the sister he had thought was dead. While there, Kayla learns she is pregnant. Kayla and Steve are both caught in the plane crash on the way back to Salem, which kills her father Shawn Brady and is later found to be the work of a deranged Ava Vitali. Kayla aids Daniel Jonas and Lexie Carver in treating Bo's pancreas condition. Under all these stresses, she begins to have problems with her pregnancy, which leads Steve to keep the information about his ex-girlfriend Ava from her. Ava mistakenly kidnaps Hope thinking she is Kayla, but Steve, Ava, and Bo soon follow to rescue Hope. Kayla discovers that the pills that Ava had been taking kept Ava from ever becoming sane. Afterward, Ava leaves Steve and Kayla alone, though she fled the country rather than pay for her crimes.

Stressed, and with an already troubled pregnancy, Kayla goes into premature labor. Joey Johnson is delivered at 26 weeks. After stabilizing, he is briefly kidnapped in the late summer of 2008 by Stefano DiMera. In early 2009, Kayla is accidentally shot by Hope at University Hospital, a situation Bo has foreseen in his psychic visions. Though the bullet penetrates the sac around the heart, Kayla recovers after surgery. Off-screen, Kayla and Steve decide to leave Salem to run a clinic in a remote part of the world. They take their infant son with them, and relate their decision and details of their situation to their daughter Stephanie in a letter, in April 2009.

In June 2010, Kayla briefly returns along with several other Brady and Horton family members to pay respects to Alice Horton after she took ill.

Kayla returned to Salem in the fall of 2011 without Steve. Within a few months, Kayla revealed that she and Steve had been arguing for months. She said that he missed his life of adventure, so he contacted Shane and rejoined the ISA. ava and Steve filed for divorce in 2012.

Kayla spent her time helping out Caroline at the Brady Pub. She was also part of the support system for Abe after Lexie died. When ava and Steve decided to end their marriage, Abe offered Kayla support as well. The two became very good friends.

After Lexie's death, Kayla took over as chief-of-staff at Salem U hospital.

In 2015, Steve returned to Salem and Joey also came to Salem. In 2016, Ava returned to Salem wanting Steve back. She locked Kayla in a room, but Kayla was soon found and Ava was hospitalized and eventually murdered by a furious Joey.

In 2017 on Valentine's Day, Steve and Kayla wed once more. Kayla welcomed Steve’s son with Ava Tripp Dalton into the family, and even mentored him at Salem University Hospital when he told her he wanted to be a doctor. This was a ruse thigh as Tripp had believed Kayla had murdered Ava, and sabotaged her to the point where she was suspended due to negligence. Tripp eventually held a scalpel to Kayla’s throat, and Joey confessed to murdering Ava and went to prison as a result. Tripp was filled remorse and Kayla eventually forgave him.

Steve ended up blind after being poisoned by John, who had been ordered to do it by their ISA boss Pamela Van Damme since she had covered for the fact that Joey had murdered Ava, and now Joey’s confession put her job at risk. Though John only did it until he and Billie Reed could neutralize Pamela a threat; the damage was done, and Kayla was devastated and furious.

Desperate to help Steve, she approached Stefan DiMera for help, but did it behind Steve’s back knowing how he felt about Stefan since Stefan had slept with Abigail Deveraux DiMera when she wasn’t in her right mind. Kayla hopes Stefan could fit Steve with a bionic eye after purchasing a company that produced them. Stefan agreed if Kayla found dirt for him on Kate. Kayla eventually took incriminating photos of Kate with shady lawyer Ted Laurent, and Stefan kept up his end of the bargain though Kayla was filled with remorse for lying to Steve. The truth eventually came out when Steve was arrested for espionage as the eye apparently recorded top secret files.

In 2019 after the time jump, it is revealed that Kayla is in a relationship with Justin Kiriakis after Steve sent her divorce papers. However, the relationship doesn't last long as she cant deny that she still is in love with Steve.

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