The cause of death of Susan Saint James, the Emmy-winning star of Kate & Allie and McMillan & Wife, has been confirmed. Saint James died on Monday, October 26, in Los Angeles. She was 80. On Thursday, November 5, People reported that her death certificate lists metastatic pancreatic cancer as the primary cause of death. She had received the diagnosis only months before she died.
Her representative confirmed her death to People on October 27, a day after she passed. In a statement, her family remembered her as a woman who was generous with her time and energy, and who was drawn to whoever needed lifting up. In the days since, tributes have arrived from across television and sports, the two worlds her life and career touched most.
A career that defined an era of television
Saint James was born Susan Jane Miller on August 14, 1946, in Los Angeles, and she grew up in Rockford, Illinois. She broke through at a young age on The Name of the Game, the drama series that ran from 1968 to 1971 and won her an Emmy Award. The role made her one of the most familiar faces on American television while she was still in her twenties.
She followed it with the part that defined her for a generation of viewers. From 1971 to 1976, she played Sally McMillan opposite Rock Hudson in McMillan & Wife, the lighthearted mystery series built around their easy chemistry. A decade later she did it again in a different register. On Kate & Allie, which ran from 1984 to 1989, she and Jane Curtin played divorced best friends raising their children under one roof. The show was warm, funny and quietly groundbreaking in how it treated single motherhood and female friendship.
Television historians place her in the generation of performers who made network TV feel like family, a tradition later carried by ensembles such as the Mike & Molly cast. In June 2008, her place in that history was set in stone when she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Tributes from co-stars and the sports world
Jane Curtin, her Kate & Allie co-star, shared a statement with ABC News after the death was announced, joining the many colleagues who spoke publicly about her warmth on and off the set. The tributes did not stop with Hollywood. On November 1, NBC Sports honored her during Football Night in America, the pregame show her husband helped build. Bob Costas noted during the tribute that Saint James spent many weekends on the road with the Sunday Night Football crew, and that she was part of that family too.
A family at the center of her life
Saint James was married for 45 years to Dick Ebersol, the longtime chairman of NBC Sports and one of the most influential executives in television. Their life together held both the ordinary joys of a big family and a loss no parent should face. In November 2004, a private plane crash killed their youngest son, Teddy, who was 14, and gravely injured Ebersol. Saint James delivered her son’s eulogy, and the family has spoken over the years about how they carried one another through the grief that followed.
She is survived by her husband, Dick Ebersol; her four children, Sunshine Lucas, Harmony Lucas, Charlie Ebersol and Willie Ebersol; seven grandchildren; her sister, Mary Mercedes Dewey; and her beloved service dog, Lola. For audiences, she will always be Sally McMillan and Kate McArdle, the quick-witted heart of two beloved series. For the people who knew her, the family’s own words may say it best: she gave her time and her energy freely, to whoever needed them most.
Sources: People, USA Today, Page Six and the Associated Press, reporting October and November 2026.