John Y. Brown Jr., KFC Mogul and Kentucky Governor, Dies at 88

He was also a high-stakes gambler, a habit that rivals would wield against him. He was investigated for failing to make a mandatory report of a $1.3 million cash withdrawal from one of his bank accounts, although he was never charged with wrongdoing.

Mr. Brown’s first marriage, to Eleanor Durall, who was known as Ellie, ended in divorce. In 1973, named chairwoman of the Kentucky Colonels after she bought a majority of the team’s stock, she became the first woman to head a major professional basketball team.

His marriage to Ms. George, in 1979, also ended in divorce, in 1998. She died of a rare blood cancer in 2020 at 70 after a long career as a CBS sportscaster, in which she shattered a barrier in 1975 by joining the all-male cast of the program “The NFL Today.”

His third marriage, to Jill Louise Roach, a former Mrs. Kentucky, ended in divorce in 2003.

Mr. Brown is survived by three children from his first marriage, Sissy Brown, Sandra Brown Steier and John Y. Brown III, who served as Kentucky’s secretary of state in the late 1990s and early 2000s; and two children from his marriage to Ms. George, Lincoln Tyler George Brown and Pamela Brown, a senior Washington correspondent and weekend anchor for CNN.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/25/us/john-y-brown-jr-dead.html