McGinley had made his TV debut in the role of a jogger in the 1979 ABC TV-movie "Valentine", which is better remembered as the TV-movie debut of Mary Martin. The next year, Garry Marshall cast him as high school teacher Roger Phillips in "Happy Days". McGinley boarded ABC's "The Love Boat" in 1984 as the ship's social director; again he reprised the role in a series of TV-movies in 1986-87. He had a one season stint on the popular primetime soap "Dynasty" (ABC, 1986-87), playing Clay Falmont, a senator's son who marries Sammi Jo (Heather Locklear). After the short-lived sitcom "Baby Talk" (ABC, 1991), which was more than inspired by the hit feature "Look Who's Talking", McGinley joined the cast of Fox's long-running "Married...With Children" as the free-loading husband of Amanda Bearse's Marcy.

Just as Garry Marshall launched McGinley on the small screen, the director also cast the actor in a key role in his uneven big screen soap opera spoof "Young Doctors in Love" (1982). Since his TV career has exploded, McGinley's feature work has been sporadic. He played the yuppie boyfriend in "Physical Evidence" (1989) and had a small role in "Wayne's World 2" (1993). TV-movies have occasionally offered some meatier roles. McGinley starred in "The Making of a Male Model" (1983). In 1996, he played opposite his real-life wife, Gigi Rice, in "Deadly Web", an NBC longform about a woman stalked via the Internet.