Photo: Theo Wargo/WireImage
Ginnie Newhart, the wife of legendary comedian and actorBob Newhart, has died. She was 82.
Publicist Jerry Digney confirmed the sad news in a statement to PEOPLE.
“Ginnie Newhart, 82, beloved wife of 60 years to comedy legend Bob Newhart, passed away Sunday April 23rd, after a long illness,” Digney said.
Bob also shared the news ina statement on Twitter. “We lost our beloved Ginnie Quinn Newhart - Wife, Mother and Grandmother on April 23rd, 2023 after a long battle with illness. She was our rock and we miss her terribly.”
Ginnie’s death comes three months after she and the Emmy winnercelebrated their 60th wedding anniversaryin January.
Lennox McLendon/AP
“Buddy said, ‘I’ve got a girl for you,'” Bob recalled. “‘She’s going with another guy, but I don’t think he’s right for her, so I’m going to fix you up on a blind date. You’ll meet her and you’ll date andyou’ll get married. Then you’ll have kids and you’ll call one of the kids Buddy.’ Which we did.”
The pair wed the following year and went on to welcome four children. After being together for six decades, the pair credited the longevity of their marriage to laughter.
“The marriages of comedians, no matter how stormy, seem to last a long time, and I attribute it to laughter,” Bob said in a 2022 interview withParade. “No matter how intense the argument you’re having, you can find a line, and then you both look at each other and start laughing. It’s over, you know? I think that sense of humor is very important to the longevity of a marriage.”
Ginnie shared a similar sentiment in her 2005 interview with PBS. “Comedians are just fun to be with,” she told the outlet. “They seem to have longevity in their marriages.”
In 2020, Bob toldCBS Sunday Morningthat Ginnie had alwaysbeen there for him, through both successes and failures. “She’d be in the dressing room. She’d say, ‘Something’s wrong with the sound system. I couldn’t hear anything,'” he remembered. “I said, ‘Honey, nothing was wrong with the sound system. They didn’t laugh!'”
Ginnie recalled that the first 10 years of his career were difficult for her husband, whom she described as being “terribly shy” when he was off stage. “I always thought that maybe he would go into teaching, or do something else,” she said. “But then I realized that it was definitely in his blood and he was … starting to enjoy it. I knew that he was hooked.”
During the run ofThe Bob Newhart Showfrom 1972 to 1978, Bob’s publicist Sam Honigberg asked Ginnie if she would be on the show.
“He said, ‘Well, we need background dancers in the back of Gisele MacKenzie and whoever else.’ And the next thing I know, I’m on a flat, I’m moving and I’m not a dancer. But they had to pay me less,” she toldPBSforBob Newhart: Unbuttonedin 2005.“I did a couple of those things where I was a dancer in the background, which I was not a dancer.”
Courtesy Bob Newhart
Ginnie, the daughter of character actor Bill Quinn, is also credited with creating the beloved finale of her husband’s showNewhartin 1990 in which his character Dick wakes up as Bob Hartley who suggests the second CBS series was a dream.
“Ginny knew I was unhappy with CBS,” Bob told Yahoo Entertainment in May 2020. “She told me, ‘You know what the final show should be? You wake up in bed with Suzie and you describe this dream you had about owning an inn in Vermont.’ I said, ‘Honey, that’s a great idea!’ Suzanne was actually at the same party, and we told her about it when we saw her. She said, ‘I’ll be there in a New York minute.'”
“I gave the idea to the writers, and they filled out the rest,” he said of the surprise ending.
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source: people.com
