Susan Saint James, best known as Kate McArdle in the CBS comedy Kate & Allie and as Sally McMillan in McMillan & Wife, has died at the age of 80. She died on Monday, 26 October, and her representative told People magazine she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Born Susan Jane Miller in Los Angeles in 1946 and raised in Rockford, Illinois, she began as a model and moved to Hollywood at 20. Her breakthrough came in The Name of the Game, which earned her an Emmy Award in 1969. She then starred opposite Rock Hudson in McMillan & Wife for five seasons, before playing Kate McArdle in Kate & Allie from 1984 to 1989 — five seasons about two divorced mothers who move in together to raise their children.
After the series she gradually stepped away from acting, saying in a 1993 interview that her children needed to be the stars of the family. She had met Dick Ebersol, then an executive producer of Saturday Night Live, in 1981 while hosting the show, and married him just 42 days later. They had three sons together, and she had two children from her earlier marriage to Tom Lucas.
In November 2004 a private plane carrying Ebersol and two of their sons crashed during takeoff in Colorado; their 14-year-old son Teddy was killed, while his father and brother survived with serious injuries. She spoke to her children about grief in terms of sadness rather than anger, gave her son’s eulogy as a personal note to each of her other children and her husband, and later answered 15,000 condolence letters by hand. She devoted herself to the Special Olympics, organised charity events, ran a radio station and started a baby gifts and books business, and celebrated her 80th birthday in August 2026 with children, grandchildren and friends. She is survived by her husband, four surviving children, seven grandchildren and her sister.
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