The short answer is: yes. Of course, I can't promise those sitcom dads were reading Playboy just for the articles, but in its first few decades Playboy was an important part of the American publishing landscape, and its non-pornographic content was often widely read and discussed. It's important to understand that Hefner saw the target demographic for the magazine as businessmen and (elite) university students. While "respectable" probably isn't quite the right word for his vision -- in addition to the pornography, Playboy was often quite countercultural in its sentiments -- "highbrow" might still be a good descriptor here.

However, the term "articles" may be sightly misleading: while the magazine did publish noteworthy non-fiction content (more on that in a moment), its more significant role was via its contributions to American literature, particularly as a venue for short stories. A handful of noted authors from the period who published in Playboy include Ian Fleming, Italo Calvino, Jack Kerouac, Shel Silverstein and John Updike. Hefner and some of his early editorial staff also had a particular interest in science fiction, which allowed for it to be one of the few "mainstream" (i.e. non-specialized) outlets in the period to publish a significant amount of sf, including work from folks like Arthur C Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, and Ursula K LeGuin (as "U K LeGuin" -- almost certainly because Playboy was notoriously unwelcoming to women authors in its early runs). Kurt Vonnegut's "Welcome to the Monkey House," a seminal work that would also serve as the title for the major collection of his short fiction, was first published in Playboy in 1968. Additionally, although it was technically a reprint, there is a strong case to be made that the place of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 in the American canon is largely owed to its serialization in the magazine. Hefner reportedly told a reunion of Playmates that without them, he'd just be the publisher of another literary journal.

The magazine also published quite a few noteworthy non-fiction essays, including work by media theorist Marshall McLuhan, and even an essay by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglass in 1968. Playboy's publication of 'creative non-fiction,' particularly from authors like Norman Mailer and Truman Capote, was essential to the emergence of "New Journalism" in the late 1960s and early 70s.

Another major cultural impact came when the magazine's "Playboy Interviews" segment launched in 1962 with Alex Haley (later the author of Roots). Haley, initially under an anonymous byline, brought increased visibility to several significant figures in African American culture, including Miles Davis and Cassius Clay (later Muhammed Ali). His interview with Malcolm X made national waves for X's comments about "white devils," and his interview with Martin Luther King Jr is the longest interview ever conducted with the civil rights leader. Other important interviews by Haley for the magazine included Tonight Show host Johnny Carson and George Lincoln Rockwell, the leader of the American Nazi Party. Though it's towards the tail end of the period I'm discussing here, Playboy's interview with Jimmy Carter in the run-up to the 1976 presidential election made for a minor political scandal when the future president admitted that he had "committed adultery in his heart" many times since being married.

So, yes, people did often read Playboy for the articles. Particularly in its first ~25 years (~1953 - 1978) or so, it played a significant role in American publishing. The cheekiness (pardon the entendre) of appearing next to naked photographs meant that the printed work always had a bit of a "subversive" aura about it, but this didn't keep it from being widely read or influential. You can think of Playboy's place in the mid-century cultural zeitgeist as somewhere between a naughty version of The New Yorker and a highbrow Rolling Stone, tossed into a blender with the cultural sensibilities of MAD Magazine and an editorial staff who grew up reading golden age sci fi in Weird Stories. Playboy continued publishing short stories and non-fiction of some import (including publishing more work by women authors, like Margaret Atwood) well after this period, though its cultural reach and significance within American publishing generally declined from the mid-70s forward.