Stan Lee Is a Widower After 69 Years

Sad news in the world of comics: Joan Lee, the wife of industry legend Stan Lee, is dead at age 93, reports Variety. She had a stroke last week and never recovered. Lee himself is 94 and had been married to Joan for 69 years. Her death prompted the Hollywood Reporter to recount how Stan Lee met his future wife, then a British hat model living in New York, back in the 1940s. A friend had told him about another hat model, but when he went to ask her to lunch, Joan answered the door.

"I took one look at her—and she was the girl I had been drawing all my life," he once recalled. "And then I heard the English accent. And I’m a nut for English accents! She said, 'May I help you?' And I took a look at her, and I think I said something crazy like, 'I love you.' I don’t remember exactly. But anyway, I took her to lunch. I never met Betty, the other girl. I think I proposed to [Joan] at lunch.” The two married Dec. 5, 1947, in Reno, Nevada, roughly an hour after Joan obtained a divorce. The Hollywood Reporter has the full story. (More Stan Lee stories.)