ABC “Dance with the Stars”
A cast member of the reality show Dancing With the Stars shared sad news with her fans on March 30. Legendary soap opera actress Susan Lucci’s husband, Helmut Huber, has died, a family representative told People.
Here’s what you need to know about his 50+ year marriage and death.
Huber died at the age of 84.
Huber died peacefully on Monday, March 28, at the age of 84 in Long Island, New York, according to People magazine.
A family representative said in a statement:
“As a family man, he was a loyal friend and loved her dearly. With a roaring sense of humor, a larger than life personality and a handy problem solver, he lived his life to the fullest. Mr Huber, who previously competed in motorcycle racing in Austria, was an elite skier and avid golfer and was a member of Garden City Golf Club and Westhampton Country Club.”
Lucci’s publicist added: “Helmut’s death is a tremendous loss to all who knew and loved him. He was an exceptional husband, father, grandfather and friend. The family kindly asks for privacy at this incredibly difficult time.”
In lieu of flowers, the family has asked for donations to the American Stroke Association to honor Huber.
With Huber it was love at first sight
Huber was born in Austria in 1937 and came to the United States at the age of 21. According to a 1999 profile in People, Huber and Lucci met at the Garden City Hotel the summer after Lucci’s freshman year. She was there as a summer waitress and Huber was the chef, and it sounded like love at first sight to him.
“When I first saw Susie I was shocked. Even today, she walks into a room and I turn on,” Huber told the magazine.
But there was a nine-year age difference. In profile, the ‘Dancing With the Stars’ season 7 actress admitted she just thought he was ‘an attractive older man’ and that they didn’t start dating until three years later on a soap opera story. .
The All My Children actress had her engagement party with another man at the Garden City Hotel and Huber was there visiting (he was working elsewhere with the hotel company at the time). His parents invited him to attend the party, and he told Lucci’s mother at the engagement party that “(this relationship) wasn’t going to last.”
“I found out about it much later,” Lucci said. “And my mother agreed with him, but she didn’t tell me that.”
A few months later, Lucci and her fiancé split, she started dating Huber, and they married a year later. It was September 1969 and they were together for more than 50 years until his death in March 2022.
In a 2018 interview with Closer Weekly, Lucci said of their marriage, “I married a man who’s very smart, very confident, and very funny. For me, the dynamic just worked. I was lucky!”.
Huber is survived by his widow Lucci, his two children Liza and Andreas, two children from a previous relationship, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
See the original story in Heavy here
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