Did you watch “Live With Regis and Kelly” today? If you did, you may have heard the sad (and shocking) news that the show’s longtime entertainment reporter Claudia Cohen died of cancer last Friday.
Frankly, I was floored. Decades ago when I worked at the television station that aired the show I watched it religiously. Subsequently, I got used to seeing Cohen on the air and enjoyed the banter she shared with Regis Philbin, Kathie Lee Gifford, and more recently, Kelly Ripa. So when Regis announced that Cohen died Friday of cancer I was stunned.
For those of you unfamiliar with Cohen she was a New York gossip columnist who became the subject of much gossip herself when she married (then later divorced) billionaire Ron Perelman. In the 1970s Cohen was known as one of the editors of the New York Post’s infamous Page Six column. By the 80s she was filling the gossip column for the Daily News and subsequently began dating Perelman (the chairman of Revlon). The two would later wed and produce a daughter, Samantha. The marriage only lasted a few years and when it was over Cohen left with an $80 million settlement and a reputation for being one heck of a socialite.
Her socialite status also provided her with incredible contacts and over time some the same people she dished about in her gossip column were the very ones that attended her elite East Hampton parties. Including, New York Senator Alfonse D’Amato whom she dated for a while following her divorce from Perelman.
Cohen eventually gave up her newspaper career to work as an entertainment correspondent for “Live With Regis and Kathie Lee” then “Live With Regis and Kelly.” This morning the show aired a touching tribute to Cohen that brought Philbin to tears.
Cohen’s other friends remembered her as “down to earth” and a “wonderful hostess.” Bob Colacello, Cohen’s friend and a Vanity Fair writer, said that although “Claudia came from a wealthy family, married a billionaire and knew the most famous people in the world, she was always a girl from the Jersey suburbs. She never put on airs.”
Meanwhile, Perelman went public with this statement: “Claudia was a remarkable, dynamic woman, a terrific mother and my best friend. She will be missed by all who knew her.”
Claudia Cohen was 56-years-old.
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