Amy Yasbeck Says John Ritter Told Her She Was ‘Too Thin’ the First Day They Met, Then Immediately Made Her a Bagel (Exclusive)
Amy Yasbeck Says John Ritter Told Her She Was ‘Too Thin’ the First Day They Met, Then Immediately Made Her a Bagel (Exclusive)
Meredith Wilshere, Esther LianSat, November 7, 2026 at 12:00 PM UTC
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John Ritter and Amy YasbeckCredit: Jean-Paul Aussenard/WireImage -
Amy Yasbeck and John Ritter were together from 1997 until he died in 2003 at age 54
Yasbeck reflects on meeting the late actor while chatting with PEOPLE at the John Ritter Foundation Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Three’s Company in New York City on Nov. 2
Yasbeck raises awareness about aortic dissection, which can be genetic and often overlooked
Amy Yasbeck will always remember meeting her late husband, John Ritter.
“My very first conversation with John was at Dennis Dugan’s house. Dennis was the director of Problem Child,” Yasbeck tells PEOPLE at the John Ritter Foundation Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Three’s Company in New York City on Nov. 2.
“And he told me I was too thin, and he fixed me a bagel,” the Wings actress, 64, adds. “I’ve been jamming those bagels ever since.”
She even clarified her exact bagel order, noting that she likes a “lightly toasted egg bagel with cream cheese, hard-boiled eggs, pickles and mustard.”
Yasbeck and Ritter, who met on the set of the 1990 comedy, were together from 1997 until his death in 2003 at the age of 54 from an aortic dissection, which was initially misdiagnosed. The couple welcomed their son, Noah, in 1998. Ritter also shared three children — sons Jason and Tyler and daughter Carly — with his first wife, Nancy Morgan.
Yasbeck recently shared that she still talks to Ritter nearly every day, but clarifies to PEOPLE that she “didn’t say that he talked back.”
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“I don’t want people to get the wrong idea. When somebody passes away — my dad passed away when I was 19 — and when they’re in your heart, you check in with them,” she shares. “You knock on that door when you need — John used to say all the time when stuff would happen, ‘Can I get a witness?’ Sometimes when you’re alone and something crazy happens or a memory comes up, you want a witness. So that person that you’ve lost stands beside you.”
John Ritter and Amy YasbeckCredit: SGranitz/WireImage
Yasbeck hopes to continue to raise awareness of Ritter’s death and warning signs of an aortic dissection — a tear in the inner layer of the body’s main artery.
“I guarantee you, there are people here who don’t even realize they’re at risk for aortic dissection or that maybe somebody in their family had died from it because it’s highly genetic,” she shares. “After we’re onstage, people will come up to find me, to find the doctors who are here, and say, ‘Am I at risk?’ Every time. Even if it was just that, because one person finds out their risk, an entire family can be saved from the heartache that we went through.”
She encourages people to get “an echocardiogram, and then keep that up every year to make sure that your aorta doesn’t become aneurysmal, which is like that ballooning, because that’s when a dissection can happen.”
She says that “there’s definitely a pre-John Ritter awareness and a post-John Ritter awareness” about the medical emergency. While Yasbeck says aortic dissections were often misdiagnosed as heart attacks, she notes that technological advances have given people more awareness of the differences.
“Sadly, John died in the waning hours of the pre-John Ritter awareness. So now we know it’s not as rare as people thought, and there are steps you can take to avoid a family tragedy,” Yasbeck tells PEOPLE.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
