Brushing Up

With over three decades of daytime acting under her belt, Patty Weaver has played plenty of melodrama, but the death in 2009 of her husband, Jerry Birn, one of Y&R’s earliest writers, was far more painful than anything the actress/singer had portrayed on-screen.

- Devin Owens

“We were only married for 14 years and it wasn’t enough,” she laments. “He was my best friend. We would have fabulous arguments and discussions and laughs and love. I was married to a really cool guy. When he got sick, it was my pleasure to take care of him until the end.”

The loss of her spouse hit Weaver hard, but she was determined to deal with the grief head-on. “I made a commitment to myself that I was going to let it all out, no matter how ugly it was, because I didn’t want to carry it around,” she explains. “My friends had to put up with me for four years, crying every day. Lee Bell [Y&R co-creator] knew that no words were going to make me feel better, so she would just hold my hand and let me cry. Everyone just let me go through what I had to go through.”