Kathryn Crosby, actress and widow of Bing Crosby, dead at 90

Kathryn and Bing Crosby.Photo byNBCUniversal via Getty Images

Kathryn Crosby, the actress who was married to Bing Crosby, has died. She was 90.

A Crosby family representative confirmed to EW she passed away Friday night at her home in Hillsborough, Calif. while surrounded by family.

The late star was born Olive Kathryn Grandstaff in West Columbia, Texas, in Nov. 1933.

Bing and Kathryn Crosby in 1957.Photo byGetty Images

Her earliest acting roles included the 1950s movies “Operation Mad Ball,” The 7th Voyage of Sinbad,” “Anatomy of a Murder” and “The Big Circus.”

She typically went by the stage names Kathryn Grant and Kathryn Grandstaff.

Come the 1960s, Kathryn largely retired from acting. She became a registered nurse in 1963 after studying at Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles.

Kathryn was 23 when she married then Bing, then 54, in a Las Vegas church in October 1957.

Bing and Kathryn Crosby at a golf tournament in England in 1975.Photo byGetty Images

“We kept meeting each other, and then we’d plan to get married, and he would have a kidney stone or something dreadful like that,” Kathryn told Smashing Interviews magazine in 2014. “We kept waiting, and I kept working. Later on, we finally managed to get married, which was a secret.”

Kathryn also addressed being asked about the couple’s 30-year age difference, saying, “When asked about I suppose that happened, but I didn’t hear it. By the time we had courted, I knew I liked him very much, and he liked me very much.”

Bing and Kathryn Crosby at the Academy Awards ceremony on March 30, 1955.Photo byMichael Ochs Archives

She added, “By the time we married, I realized I could survive without him, and he realized he didn’t want to survive without me. I liked that. That’s a good attitude to enter a marriage with.”