Steve was originally a thug that Victor Kiriakis hired to scare Kayla -- and worse, he had a beef with Kayla's brother Bo, who used to be a friend but who had gouged Steve's eye out during a fight over a woman. Good girl Kayla tried as hard as she could to resist her attraction to Steve, but eventually she gave in. But then they had another problem: not only did her family not approve, but Steve couldn't see why a woman as wonderful as Kayla would want anything to do with him and pushed her away.

When two orphans came into the Bradys' lives, Steve and Kayla helped Caroline and Shawn adopt them. Frankie and Max later became a beloved part of the Brady family.

Steve and Kayla took a while to get to the point that they were ready to make love. First, they went on the run twice -- first because of Britta Englund, and then because Steve was falsely accused of shooting Harper Deveraux. After things settled down and Steve was no longer a wanted man, he and Kayla made love for the first time.

Steve's low self-esteem came from his traumatic childhood. His father, Duke, was a violent drunk and his mother had put Steve and his baby brother Billy (aka Jack Deveraux) up for adoption to protect them. Naturally, Steve's family turned up in Salem, and his sister Adrienne ended up killing Duke, who had raped her. Steve pushed Kayla away after this, claiming that Adrienne would have suffered less if Kayla had let Steve kill Duke. But the real reason he distanced himself from Kayla was that his mother said Duke wasn't always so bad and that Steve reminded her of him, and Steve feared hurting Kayla someday.

Kayla's heart belonged to Steve, but his brother Jack was supposedly dying of cancer and was into Kayla, so Steve backed off. However, Kayla never consummated the marriage with Jack, and eventually, she and Steve had an affair. When Jack found out, he raped his wife --and when Steve walked in on what Jack was doing to Kayla, he nearly killed his brother.

Kayla lost her hearing after Harper Deveraux attacked her, and an operation to restore it failed, instead rendering her mute. However, Kayla's condition was said to be a stress reaction. Jack finally divorced Kayla, realizing he was contributing to her inability to speak and hear, and Steve learned sign language so that he could tell her how much he loved her.

Steve was prepared to say his vows in sign language when he and Kayla married. But when it was time to say I do, all of a sudden Kayla regained her voice and was able to declare her love for him out loud. This iconic moment was symbolic of Steve and Kayla's deep love for one another.

While on their honeymoon, Steve and Kayla ran across a little boy, Benji, who was deaf. They were able to communicate with Benji through sign language. It turned out Benji was one of Stefano Dimera's many sons, which would turn out to be a problem when he grew up. For now, Benji's grandfather took him in, and Steve and Kayla said goodbye to him.

When Steve helped hide Nick Corelli, Nick gifted him and Kayla a mansion to thank him. Steve found a diary from the Civil War, which detailed the love story between Union soldier Gideon and Confederate girl Emily. Stephen Nichols and Mary Beth Evans played these characters in flashbacks as Steve and Kayla read the diary.

An ex-wife of Steve's named Marina Toscano showed up, determined to win Steve back for herself. Marina was nothing but trouble, and eventually, she ended up dead -- and a pregnant Kayla was arrested for her murder. Steve ended up breaking Kayla out of prison when baby Stephanie was kidnapped, and Jack and Jennifer helped them find her and also to clear Kayla's name.

Steve and Kayla got married again as soon as Kayla was exonerated for Marina's murder. However, this time Steve wanted Jack as his best man, so Kayla had to find a way to make peace with having her rapist as a brother-in-law.

In 1990, Lawrence Alamain put poison in Steve's IV line while Steve was in the hospital recovering from having been in an explosion. Everyone thought Steve was dead, but he had really been kidnapped by the Dimeras. Meanwhile, a grief-stricken Kayla turned to her sister Kim's ex, Shane Donovan, for comfort.

In 2006, Jack faked his own death because he believed his cancer had returned and didn't want to put Jennifer through watching him die a slow, agonizing death.

However, he found a surprising person working in the hospice he secretly went to -- his brother Steve, who was supposed to be dead! Jack brought Steve back to Salem, but Steve had no memory of his identity or his former life with Kayla and began a relationship with Billie instead.

However, when Kayla was poisoned, Steve's kiss brought her back to life, and he faked having his memory back so she wouldn't suffer a relapse. But when Kayla took Stee to a bungalow to spark his memories, he lay down for a nap and woke up filled with knowledge of their history together.

When a now-adult Benjy visited and gave Steve a tarot card, Steve suddenly began acting out Dimera orders. It turned out he was tortured and brainwashed during his sixteen-year absence, and Benjy was forced to help activate his brainwashing when Stefano and EJ threatened Benjy's family. Luckily, Kayla was able to break Steve's programming just before he tried to kill Bo.

Steve and Kayla considered fostering an abandoned baby, whom they named Pocket. Pocket turned out to be Mimi and Philip's son, who had been abandoned by the woman they used as a surrogate.

He also turned out to have a rare genetic disorder that Philip mistook for Steve poisoning him, which resulted in social services removing Pocket from Steve and Kayla's care. Eventually, Pocket was adopted by the couple who took care of him after he was taken away from Steve and Kayla.

Steve and Kayla went to Ireland with Shawn Senior, but unfortunately, they ran into Steve's crazy ex, Ava Vitali.

Ava sabotaged their plane home, resulting in Shawn's death, and then continued to stalk Steve and Kayla. Steve didn't tell Kayla about it because she was pregnant and he was afraid the stress would hurt the baby.

Ava's stalking got worse and worse, but eventually Kayla realized that Ava's medication was making her worse instead of better. However, Ava fled the country once she was sane so that she wouldn't have to answer for her crimes.

Kayla's pregnancy with Joey was complicated, and he ended up being born nearly three months early. Joey had to be put in the NICU and given assistance with his breathing. Steve was by Kayla's side for the whole ordeal, encouraging her to believe that their son would make it.

Steve, Kayla, and Joey left for Africa soon after he was born, but Kayla returned by herself in 2011, saying that Steve had divorced her so he could go back to the ISA. However, in 2015, Steve returned to try to help Kayla parent a rebellious teenage Joey, who hated his mother and wanted to live with his father full-time. Kayla was at first not interested in rekindling her relationship with Steve, but he kept pursuing her until she changed her mind.

Ava Vitali returned to Salem and was up to her old tricks. She wanted Steve back and used Joey to get to him, flirting with the teen and causing him to become obsessed with her so she could pump him for info about his parents.

Eventually, Ava kidnapped Kayla and threatened to kill her if Steve didn't have sex with her. Despite being a rape survivor herself, Kayla couldn't get past Steve sleeping with Ava and it put a wedge in their relationship for a while.

But soon they had a much bigger problem to deal with, as Ava overdosed on morphine on purpose to make it look like Kayla did it to her and Joey killed Ava while she was in the hospital recovering.

Soon before her death, Ava claimed to have had a son with Steve. At first, Steve believed the kid was dead, but he later found out his son, Tripp, was alive.

Steve and Kayla went to Arizona to meet Tripp, who turned out to be an angry kid who had been raised by abusive adoptive parents.

When they got back to Salem, Tripp continued to act out, especially when he mistakenly believed that Kayla killed his mother.

Tripp tried to get revenge by changing Kayla's patient notes to make her seem incompetent and eventually took Kayla hostage, but Steve talked him into letting Kayla go.

Steve began having dizzy spells and thought it had to do with changes to his vision, as he was also having trouble seeing. It turned out that Steve's friend John had been forced to poison him. Steve got an antidote in time to save his life, but he lost his vision and had a hard time letting Tripp and Kayla help him with things that he used to be able to do himself before he went blind.

Kayla found out about an experimental treatment: a bionic eye that could restore Steve's sight in his good eye. However, Stefan Dimera owned the patent and he forced Kayla to spy on Kate for him and to hand over Abigail's confidential medical files before he would allow Steve to have the treatment. In addition, Kayla was afraid that if Steve knew the eye came from Stefan, he would refuse the treatment and didn't tell him. This situation became more complicated when someone hacked the eye and stole classified documents Steve was reading, leading to Steve getting arrested for espionage.

After Steve was exonerated, he remained in Washington, DC, where he had been imprisoned, on a top-secret ISA matter. However, Kayla suspects that the real reason he doesn't come home is that he's angry at her over the whole mess with the bionic eye. Will Steve and Kayla find their way back to each other once again?