Kathryn Crosby, the actress who was married to Bing Crosby, has died. She was 90 years old.
A representative for the Crosby family confirmed to EW that she died Friday evening at her home in Hillsborough, California, surrounded by her family.
The late star was born Olive Kathryn Grandstaff in West Columbia, Texas, in November 1933.
Her first acting roles included the 1950s films “Operation Mad Ball,” “Sinbad’s Seventh Voyage,” “Anatomy of a Murder,” and “The Great Circus.”
She usually performed under the stage names Kathryn Grant and Kathryn Grandstaff.
In the 1960s, Kathryn largely withdrew from acting. After studying at the Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles, she became a qualified nurse in 1963.
Kathryn was 23 when she married Bing, then 54, in a church in Las Vegas in October 1957.
“We kept meeting and then planning to get married, and then he had a kidney stone or something horrible like that,” Kathryn told Smashing Interviews magazine in 2014. “We kept waiting and I kept working. Later on, we finally managed to get married, which was a secret.”
Kathryn also addressed how she was asked about the 30-year age difference between the pair, saying: “When I was asked about it, I assume that’s what happened, but I didn’t hear anything about it. When we were courting, I knew I liked him a lot and he liked me a lot.”
She added: “When we got married, I realized I could survive without him and he realized he didn’t want to survive without me. I liked that. That’s a good attitude to have in a marriage.”
Kathryn and Bing had three children together: Harry, 66, Mary, 65, and Nathaniel, 62.
During her marriage to Bing, Kathryn was a guest star on “The Bing Crosby Show” in the 1960s.
In the 1970s, she also hosted her own local daytime show, “The Kathryn Crosby Show.”
After Bing’s death in 1977 at the age of 74, Kathryn returned to acting, notably playing the lead role in the 1966 revival of the Broadway musical State Fair.
She also hosted the charitable Crosby National Golf Tournament in North Carolina for 16 years until 2001.
Kathryn married her second husband, Maurice William Sullivan, in 2000.
Ten years later, Sullivan died in a car accident in the Sierra Nevada. He was 85 years old.
Kathryn leaves behind three children and several grandchildren.
