Burt Reynolds’ Ex Wife and ‘WKRP in Cincinnati’ Star Loni Anderson Dead Days Before 80th Birthday

Burt Reynolds’ ex wife and former WKRP in Cincinnati star Loni Anderson has died. She was 79.

“We are heartbroken to announce the passing of our dear wife, mother and grandmother,” Anderson’s family said in a statement to the Associated Press on Sunday, August 3, announcing her death. According to her longtime publicist, Cheryl J. Kagan, Anderson died at a Los Angeles hospital due to a “prolonged” illness, the AP reported.

Us Weekly has reached out to Anderson’s rep for comment.

Anderson was famously married to Burt from 1988 to 1994. The pair first met in 1981 on The Merv Griffin Show, when she was still married to actor Ross Bickell and Burt was involved with fellow actress Sally Field. The pair started dating a year later, and went on to star alongside one another in 1983’s Stroker Ace.

In 1988, during their wedding ceremony on Burt’s sprawling 160-acre Florida ranch, the late actor presented his then-bride with a seven-carat “canary yellow diamond surrounded by smaller white diamonds,” as previously reported by People. At the time, Anderson was 41 and Burt was 52.

The pair shared a son, Quinton Reynolds, who Anderson said was “the best decision that we ever made in our entire relationship” during the 2021 unveiling of a bronze bust at her ex-husband’s Hollywood grave site. (Burt died in 2018 after suffering a heart attack. He was 82.)

“I think back to the beginning of our relationship, it was so, oh, gosh, tabloid,” she previously told the AP. “We were just a spectacle all the time. And it was hard to have a relationship in that atmosphere. And somehow, we did it through many ups and downs.”