Shelley Fabares’ family has revealed what caused the Coach and The Donna Reed Show actress’ death five days after she died at 82.
Fabares died of pneumonia, her family confirmed on Aug. 27. She had died Aug. 22 in Los Angeles surrounded by loved ones, but the family’s initial announcement did not disclose a cause.
“To her family and friends, Shelley was a source of love, strength, laughter, and comfort,” the family said after her death. Fabares had been through a different life-threatening illness years earlier. An emergency-room visit for an esophageal bleed in early 1999 revealed progressive liver failure. She was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis and spent 22 months waiting for a transplant.
A new liver became available in October 2000. Fabares later said she had been “changed by the experience.” Mike Farrell had been with her through it. She said her husband was there “every step of the way.” Fabares and the M*A*S*H actor married on Dec. 31, 1984. She became stepmother to his two children, Michael and Erin.
Farrell Remembered the Cable Car Ride That Started Their Romance
Farrell was talking about how they got together only a few months before Fabares died. The two actors had known each other casually and would “bump into each other” at Hollywood events. In 1980, Farrell returned from a trip to El Salvador and went directly to San Francisco for a CBS dinner. He saw Fabares there.
“I just would like you to know that every time I see you, I feel really good and I feel a little calmer than I had been prior to that,” Farrell remembered telling her. After dinner, a cable car stopped outside. Farrell asked if she wanted to take a ride. Fabares told him she was seeing someone. Then she changed her mind.
“She turned away, and then she turned back and she said, ‘Sure, why not?’” Farrell recalled. They rode down to Fisherman’s Wharf. Farrell had just come back from visiting refugee camps in Central America. He said he spent their walk telling Fabares about what he had seen. “She was very patient and very sweet and very supportive,” he said.
The next morning, CBS put them in the same car to the airport. Farrell invited Fabares and the man she was dating to hear him speak about El Salvador. She could not make that talk but asked him to tell her when he did another one. He did. Months later, Fabares came with her sister.
Farrell remembered getting coffee with her afterward and asking about a problem she had mentioned the last time they spoke. He meant a problem with the writers on One Day at a Time. Fabares answered a different question. “Oh, we’re not seeing each other anymore,” she told him.
Farrell laughed when he retold the story. “And I said, ‘Oh. Well, that’s nice.’”
Nanette Fabray Worked With Her Niece on ‘One Day at a Time’
Fabares was playing Francine Webster on One Day at a Time at the time. She joined the CBS comedy during its later seasons, while her aunt Nanette Fabray was already appearing as Katherine Romano, the mother of Bonnie Franklin’s Ann Romano. The aunt and niece worked on the same series.
Fabray later remembered working with Fabares when she sat down for the Television Academy’s oral-history project. One Day at a Time ended in 1984. That was also the year Fabares and Farrell got married.
They married in the backyard of Fabares’ aunt, actress Nanette Fabray, on New Year’s Eve 1984. Fabray turned up in another of her niece’s television shows a few years later. She guest-starred on Coach.
Craig T. Nelson Called Fabares a ‘Foundational Part’ of His Life
Fabares had begun playing Christine Armstrong opposite Craig T. Nelson’s Hayden Fox in 1989. She had a feeling about the series early. “I did always feel from the very beginning if they could find the right spot for us, this was a show that would last,” Fabares said in a 1993 interview.
It lasted nine seasons. Fabares stayed through the final season in 1997 and received two Emmy nominations for the role. Nelson remembered her after her death. “She was a foundational part of my life during the run of Coach,” he said.
He remembered going to Fabares for advice and described her as a steady presence when making television became chaotic. “I’ll remember you with love, Shelley Fabares,” Nelson said.
Years earlier, Farrell had another description of what he saw in her. “There is a light inside her that is just magical,” he told PEOPLE in 1991. Fabares had her own description of the marriage. “Mike grounds me, and I think I pull him out sometimes,” she said. “It’s a nice mix.”
