Susan Saint James, ‘Kate & Allie’ and ‘McMillan & Wife’ Star, Dies at 80

A rep for Saint James confirmed to PEOPLE the Emmy winner died on Monday, Oct. 26

Susan Saint James has died at the age of 80. The actress was best known for her roles on the TV series McMillan & Wife and Kate & Allie .

A rep for Saint James confirmed to PEOPLE that the actress died on Monday, Oct. 26 after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

In a statement shared with PEOPLE, her family remembers Saint James as someone who was “generous with her time and energy, which she valued more than money, and instinctively drawn to whoever needed lifting up. She taught her children to pause, be kind and look out for other people.”

They continued, “She never met a stranger. Every person she met became the most important person in the room at that moment, from a fellow board member to the clerk at the shoe store, who usually walked away knowing her entire life story. Her defining act: weeks after losing her youngest son, Teddy, in the November 28, 2004 plane crash, she delivered his eulogy as a note to each of her other children and her husband, giving them words to heal. Even in the deepest grief of her life, she put everyone else first. Days after the crash she sat with Tim Russert to thank the people who had reached out and to tell them the family was okay.”

The statement concluded, “She brought that same fire and positivity to everything that followed, and never lost it. She is survived by her husband, Dick Ebersol, her four children–Sunshine Lucas, Harmony Lucas, Charlie Ebersol and Willie Ebersol–her seven grandchildren; her sister, Mary Mercedes Dewey, as well as her beloved service dog, Lola.”

Saint James was born Susan Jane Miller in Los Angeles in 1946. She was raised in Rockford, Ill. She told PEOPLE in 1977 that at age 7, she saw a Rhonda Fleming film and knew “I’d be a movie star, be friends with people in Hollywood, and have a legitimate reason to see Rock Hudson every day for five years.” By age 10, she was an avid moviegoer. She told PEOPLE she saw the classic The King and I 31 times.

Her parents, she said, gave her a “solid base as a child” that allowed her “to be somewhat freaky as an adult.” She attended Catholic school, where, she recalled, she was “the most holy and always in church. I’m sure the ‘Saint’ in my name comes from my Virgin Mary complex.”

She graduated high school at 16 and enrolled briefly at Connecticut College, which was a women’s college at the time. She also spent time in France, where she became fluent in the language. She then headed to New York to try modeling. “But I was overenthusiastic and they kept telling me to develop ‘chic reserve.’” she said in 1977. She enjoyed a few years of success.

At age 20, she changed her last name to Saint James and headed to Hollywood to pursue the acting career she’d dreamed of having. She signed a weekly contract with Universal and began appearing on-screen. One of her earliest movies was 1968’s Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows . In 1968, she landed a role on the TV series The Name of the Game . She received three Emmy nominations for the series, winning once.

In 1971, she signed on to McMillan & Wife ; Hudson played the former role, and she the latter. She received three more Emmy nominations for the part.

Saint James stayed with the show for five seasons. “We did a pilot one year and then worked together almost five and a half years, except that they went on a year without me,” she told Yahoo in 2015. “My character died. It was very sad, but [Hudson’s] character didn’t waste any time having any other girlfriends either! I saw him years later, and I said, ‘How could you! How could you have gotten together with Sally Field?’ But at the time I thought, ‘I’m turning 30, I better get out to the movie world soon.’ So it was OK.”

From 1967 to 1968, Saint James was married to scriptwriter Richard Neubert. In 1971, she married makeup artist Tom Lucas. They welcomed two children, daughter Sunshine and son Harmony. Her children’s names, combined with her vegetarianism and liberal beliefs led her to be portrayed in the press as a hippie. Lucas was also her manager until they divorced in 1977.

That same year, she starred in Outlaw Blues with Peter Fonda. She also appeared in the 1979 vampire comedy Love at First Bite and 1980’s How to Beat the High Cost of Living with Jane Curtin and Jessica Lange.

In 1981, while hosting Saturday Night Live , Saint James met NBC executive Dick Ebersol. They went on a date after rehearsal and quickly fell for each other. “I knew I was going to take down my old boyfriends’ pictures and ask him what he wanted for breakfast,” she told PEOPLE in 1983 of their instant connection. They married 42 days after meeting. They welcomed three children together: Charles , William and Edward, known as Teddy.

In 1984, Saint James began starring with Curtin on the new sitcom Kate & Allie . In it, they played two divorced best friends who move in together, with their children in tow. “This is not a statement saying, ‘Girls, leave the guys and go live with your best friend,’” Saint James told PEOPLE in 1984. “Kate and Allie didn’t plan this. It’s just the best solution they could think of, and their friendship sustains them.”

She initially wasn’t sure about signing on. “I could relate to the problems of a divorced woman,” she said, “but I didn’t want to play a show with glib kid actors.” She was convinced the kids would be good, and the show, filmed in New York, let her stay with her family in Connecticut. “I wanted to be near my husband and to give my children the structure I had as a kid,” she explained.

The series was a sensation; PEOPLE wrote, “There couldn’t be two juicier roles for women in prime time,” and praised the show for letting mothers on TV be full, well-rounded humans. Saint James received two more Emmy nominations before the series ended in 1989.

James took a step away from Hollywood at the end of the ‘80s. She made one appearance on The Drew Carey Show , one on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in 2006 and one on Suits in 2011. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2008.

“The biggest part of my retirement from films and television is because my kids are at that age now where they need to be the stars of our family,” she told the Baltimore Sun in 1993. “They don’t need a mother who, when she walks in a room, they get shoved out of the way. I’ve had a much more pleasant life since that star has faded.”

In November 2004, a private jet carrying Dick, Charles and Teddy crashed in Montrose, Colorado, killing 14-year-old Teddy. The family had been celebrating Thanksgiving in Los Angeles. “There’s so many ways that these things can happen,” Saint James told PEOPLE in 2022. “You can have an argument the night before, or you’re far away or working. It’s a whole another experience that we had, because we could just remember the hilarious time that we had in L.A. Everybody has a really fond memory of that, and everybody said, ‘Oh, I love you. See you at Christmas. Goodbye.’”

Weeks later on Christmas, the family opened presents Teddy had picked out for them all. “They were hilarious,” Saint James remembered. “It was like he was there.”

Susan famously went on the Today show a few days after the crash with family friend and NBC journalist Tim Russert to express her profound thanks to fans for sending their condolences. According to her family, at the funeral, she gave a “powerful” eulogy in which she spoke to each of her surviving children and Ebersol, offering them specific pieces of advice and comfort. “That was Susan, always finding a way to buoy other people in their darkest moments with empathy and advice only she could muster,” her family tells PEOPLE.

After the crash, Saint James received 27,000 letters of support and replied to 15,000 of those letters with a handwritten note. According to her family, after the crash, she told her children, “You can be sad, but you can’t be mad sad. God doesn’t make planes crash and the pilots didn’t want to die. Being mad will rob you of being sad and this is very sad.”

She made it her mission to help other parents who had lost children, offering guidance and support. Among those she befriended was Lynn McDonnell, whose daughter Grace was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting . They developed a close friendship, often speaking multiple times a week.

During her time away from the spotlight, Saint James owned WZBG Radio in Litchfield, Connecticut with iHeart Radio Chairman Bob Pittman. She founded Seedling & Pip, a baby gifts and books business in the ‘90s and went back to school in her 50s to become a master gardener.

After Ebersol retired in 2011, her family tells PEOPLE they spent their time road tripping across the country attending minor league baseball games and staying in Hampton Inns.

She spent her life championing the Special Olympics, after she attended the first Special Olympics Games in Chicago in 1968 at founder Eunice Shriver’s invitation. Saint James served on the International Special Olympics Board of Directors for decades and then the Board of the Special Olympics of Connecticut. Additionally, she created and ran the Susan Saint James Celebrity Poker Tournament at Foxwoods to benefit the Special Olympics. She also worked with the Telluride Foundation, the board of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center at the University of Notre Dame and Assistance Dogs of Hawaii.

She celebrated turning 80 in August by seeing the Doobie Brothers (with whom she toured in the ‘70s and ‘80s) the night before her birthday with all of her children and grandchildren. The band surprised her by wishing her a happy birthday and dedicating “Black Water,” Teddy’s favorite song, to her. On her actual birthday, her kids, grandkids, Ebersol and close friends celebrated in her backyard. According to her family, she told them it “was one of the best two days of her entire life.”

“Her greatest joy outside her children was her seven grandchildren, five girls and two boys, ages 5 to 18,” her family adds.

Saint James is survived by her husband, four children, seven grandchildren, her sister, Mary Mercedes Dewey, and her beloved service dog, Lola.