Ka Ho Cho: The Woman Who Loved Redd Foxx When It Was the Hardest Thing to Do

Quick Bio

Detail	Info
Full Name	Ka Ho Cho (also spelled Ka Ho Choi in some sources)
Born	Approximately 1953, Seoul, South Korea
Died	December 18, 2014, aged approximately 61
Nationality	Korean-American (naturalised US citizen approximately 1980)
Who She Was	Personal assistant, manager, and fourth wife of legendary American comedian Redd Foxx; a private Korean immigrant who stepped into one of the most chaotic personal circumstances in show business history and stayed
Key Facts	She met Redd Foxx at a Las Vegas concert around 1984 and became his personal assistant and manager before eventually his wife; she married him on July 5, 1991 — just months before his death from a heart attack on the set of The Royal Family on October 11, 1991; she inherited his estate but it was crushed under an IRS debt of approximately $3.6 million
Other Key Facts	She moved to the United States around 1972 and built a life in America for over a decade before entering Redd Foxx’s world; she maintained almost total privacy until her death in 2014; the age gap between them was approximately three decades

Why This Story Still Pulls at People

There’s a very specific kind of story that the entertainment industry produces, and it rarely gets told properly. It’s the story of the person standing next to the legend when everything falls apart. Not the friend who shows up for the good years. Not the colleague who benefits from the success. The person who is there for the mess — the debt, the decline, the difficult final chapter — and who chooses to stay anyway.

Ka Ho Cho is that person in the Redd Foxx story. A Korean immigrant who came to America in her late teens or early twenties, spent years building a quiet life in a country that wasn’t hers yet, and eventually ended up at the centre of one of the most tragicomic deaths in American comedy history. The man she loved died on a television set, and the people watching thought it was a bit.

That’s the life she had. And she carried it with a level of dignity that almost nobody gave her credit for.

Seoul, South Korea, and a Life That Started Far From Las Vegas

Ka Ho Cho was born in Seoul around 1953. The city she was born into was still healing from the Korean War, which had ended just weeks before her likely birth year — a country divided, rebuilding, carrying the specific weight of a conflict that had reshaped the entire peninsula. Growing up in Seoul in the 1950s and 1960s meant growing up in a society in the middle of extraordinary transformation — poverty, reconstruction, and the beginnings of the economic modernisation that would eventually make South Korea one of the world’s most dynamic economies.

Details about her specific family — her parents, whether she had siblings, what her household looked like in Seoul — are not something the public record has captured. What it does show is that she grew up in a Christian household, a faith tradition that would remain part of her identity as she navigated the enormous changes her life would bring.

She arrived in the United States around 1972. She was approximately nineteen years old, depending on which birth year estimate is most accurate. Immigration at that age, to a country whose language and culture you’re still learning, from a country as culturally specific as South Korea — that takes a particular kind of courage. The early 1970s was a complex time to arrive in America. The civil rights movement had reshaped the legal landscape but not erased the social one. Korean-Americans occupied a specific and sometimes difficult position in that landscape, particularly on the West Coast where the Korean community was concentrated.

She became a naturalised American citizen approximately eight years after arriving, around 1980. That timeline matters. Building toward citizenship takes sustained commitment and sustained presence. By 1980, she had been in America for nearly a decade and had made it her actual home, not just a temporary address.

Las Vegas, A Concert, and the Man Nobody Else Was Managing Well

Around 1984, Ka Ho Cho attended a concert in Las Vegas. Redd Foxx was performing. The man who had changed American comedy through his raw, boundary-pushing stand-up work — the man who had brought Sanford and Son into the American living room and become one of the most recognisable faces on television — was by 1984 in a complicated situation.

His career had taken turbulent turns after Sanford and Son ended. The subsequent shows hadn’t replicated its success. His personal finances were increasingly complicated by spending habits and, looming larger every year, by what would eventually become a catastrophic relationship with the Internal Revenue Service. He was in his early sixties. His personal life had gone through multiple marriages. He needed someone who could actually help him function professionally.

They met at that Las Vegas concert and Ka Ho Cho became his personal assistant and manager. Not his girlfriend first, or his admirer first — she came into his professional life in a working capacity before anything personal developed. That sequence matters because it establishes something about who she was: a person who was useful and capable before she was anything more.

The age gap between them was real and significant. Redd was born in 1922; Ka Ho was born approximately thirty years later. That’s a generation and more. The public looked at it with the particular scepticism the public often brings to relationships with large age differences, especially when the younger partner is a foreign-born woman and the older partner is a wealthy entertainer with a complicated history. The assumptions were unkind and mostly wrong.

The Years Before the Wedding

The relationship between Ka Ho Cho and Redd Foxx between 1984 and 1991 was a long chapter before the formal one began. Seven years of working together, being together, navigating his professional difficulties together. By the time the marriage happened, they had already been through a great deal.

Redd’s relationship with the IRS was deteriorating across those years. The tax debt that would ultimately define his estate’s aftermath had been building through a combination of underpayment, audits, and what appears to have been genuinely chaotic financial management across a long career that had generated significant income without generating equivalent financial discipline. By the time Ka Ho Cho came into his life, the problem was already serious. By the time they married, it was nearly terminal for his finances.

She stayed. That’s the thing about Ka Ho Cho that the story always circles back to. She could see what the situation was. She was managing his affairs professionally, which meant she understood his financial position better than almost anyone. She chose to marry him anyway, on July 5, 1991.

The Wedding and the Ninety-Eight Days That Followed

They married in July 1991. Redd was sixty-eight years old. Ka Ho was approximately thirty-eight. The ceremony was private, which fit who she was.

Ninety-eight days later, on October 11, 1991, Redd Foxx was on the set of his new television series The Royal Family — a CBS sitcom he had taken on as a late-career attempt to recapture the kind of success he’d had with Sanford and Son. In the middle of a rehearsal, he collapsed.

Here is the part of the story that is almost unbearable in retrospect. The people on set — co-stars, crew members — initially thought he was joking. Redd Foxx had spent years doing the famous bit in Sanford and Son where Fred Sanford grabs his chest and exclaims that he’s having the big one, calling out to his dead wife Elizabeth. It was one of the most recognisable routines in American television history. When Redd Foxx collapsed on the set of The Royal Family, people laughed.

He wasn’t joking. He died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center at the age of 68, from a heart attack.

Ka Ho Cho had been married to the man for less than a hundred days.

What She Inherited and What She Had to Fight For

The estate she inherited was not a gift. It was a liability. Redd Foxx had accumulated an IRS debt of approximately $3.6 million at the time of his death. The government was owed an enormous amount of money. His assets — including his home, his possessions, his professional legacy — were entangled in that debt.

She fought legal battles with creditors and with relatives over what remained. His adopted daughter Debraca Denise also had claims on the estate. The process of untangling what Redd Foxx left behind took years and was not a quiet or comfortable experience.

Ka Ho Cho navigated all of it while simultaneously grieving a marriage that had lasted ninety-eight days. The two things don’t separate neatly — the grief and the legal struggle were happening at the same time, fuelled by each other, both exhausting.

She stayed committed to preserving his legacy through all of it. She participated in tribute events, contributed to efforts to keep his work alive and his contribution to American comedy acknowledged. She didn’t disappear, but she also didn’t perform the grief or the struggle for public consumption.

The Private Years and the End

After the estate battles wound down, Ka Ho Cho lived quietly. She maintained no social media presence. She gave very few interviews. The world had paid a certain kind of attention to her at the height of the legal situation and then, when the cameras moved on, she moved on too — but inward rather than outward.

She died on December 18, 2014. She was approximately sixty-one years old. The cause of her death was not publicised in the immediate coverage that followed. She had spent twenty-three years after Redd Foxx’s death living quietly, and she died quietly too.

The Financial Reality

Ka Ho Cho’s net worth was never publicly disclosed. What is known is that whatever she inherited from Redd Foxx’s estate was substantially reduced by the IRS debt and the legal battles that followed his death. She built no independent public professional profile that would suggest significant independent wealth accumulation. Her net worth at the time of her death is not something the public record addresses in any credible way.

A Reflection on What Her Life Was

Ka Ho Cho’s story is worth telling properly because it so rarely gets told at all. When Redd Foxx comes up — in comedy retrospectives, in entertainment history discussions, in the constant rediscovery of Sanford and Son by new generations — she appears as a footnote. His fourth wife. The Korean woman he married near the end.

But her story is genuinely substantial. She came from a country rebuilding from war. She immigrated as a teenager to a country that wasn’t always welcoming. She built a life and a professional identity and eventually found herself at the centre of one of the most complicated endings in American comedy. She absorbed the grief, absorbed the debt, absorbed the legal battles, and still found the capacity to protect and promote the legacy of a man she had loved for almost a decade before she’d been able to call him her husband.

That’s not nothing. That’s a complete human story, even if the world mostly looked past it to get to the more famous person standing beside her.

FAQs

1. Who was Ka Ho Cho?

Ka Ho Cho was a Korean-American woman who became the fourth and final wife of comedian and actor Redd Foxx, marrying him on July 5, 1991. Born in Seoul, South Korea, around 1953, she immigrated to the United States around 1972 and became a naturalised citizen around 1980. She met Redd Foxx at a Las Vegas concert around 1984 and became his personal assistant and manager before eventually his wife. She died on December 18, 2014, at approximately 61 years of age.

2. How long was Ka Ho Cho married to Redd Foxx?

Approximately ninety-eight days. They married on July 5, 1991. Redd Foxx died of a heart attack on October 11, 1991, on the set of the CBS series The Royal Family.

3. How did Redd Foxx die?

He suffered a heart attack during a rehearsal for The Royal Family on October 11, 1991. The tragedy was compounded by the fact that some members of the cast and crew initially believed he was performing his famous bit from Sanford and Son where Fred Sanford fakes a heart attack. He died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center later that day.

4. What happened to Ka Ho Cho after Redd Foxx died?

She inherited his estate but faced significant legal and financial difficulties due to Redd Foxx’s approximately $3.6 million IRS debt. She navigated legal battles with creditors and relatives including Foxx’s adopted daughter Debraca Denise. She subsequently lived privately, participating occasionally in tribute events honoring Foxx’s legacy, before her death in December 2014.

5. How did Ka Ho Cho and Redd Foxx meet?

They met at a Redd Foxx concert in Las Vegas around 1984. Ka Ho Cho subsequently became his personal assistant and manager, a professional role that preceded their romantic relationship. They were together for approximately seven years before marrying in 1991.

6. What was the age difference between Ka Ho Cho and Redd Foxx?

December 9, 1922, was Redd Foxx’s birthday. Ka Ho Cho was born around 1953. The age gap between them was approximately thirty years, which drew public attention and scrutiny during their relationship.

7. Did Ka Ho Cho have children?

No children of Ka Ho Cho and Redd Foxx are documented in any verified source. Redd Foxx had an adopted daughter, Debraca Denise, from his second wife Betty Jean Harris.

8. What was Redd Foxx’s IRS debt?

At the time of his death in 1991, Redd Foxx owed approximately $3.6 million to the Internal Revenue Service. This debt substantially complicated Ka Ho Cho’s inheritance of his estate and led to prolonged legal proceedings.

9. When did Ka Ho Cho die?

She died on December 18, 2014, at approximately 61 years of age. The specific cause of her death was not widely publicised.

10. Was Ka Ho Cho active on social media?

No. She maintained no known public social media presence throughout her life, consistent with her overall approach to maintaining privacy.

11. What is Ka Ho Cho’s net worth?

Her personal net worth was never publicly disclosed. Whatever she inherited from Redd Foxx’s estate was significantly reduced by the IRS debt and subsequent legal battles. No credible estimate of her independent financial situation exists in the public record.

12. How many times was Redd Foxx married?

Four times. His first wife was Evelyn Killebrew. His second wife was Betty Jean Harris. His third wife is described by some sources as Joi, a waitress significantly younger than him whom he married in 1976. His fourth and final wife was Ka Ho Cho, whom he married in 1991 shortly before his death.

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