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The late actor Paul Sorvino and his wife Dee Dee Benkie announced their elopement in 2015 and shared a small part of their love story with Neil Cavuto of Fox News after the first meeting in the green room during separate appearances on the network.
Sorvino, known for his roles in “Goodfellas” and “Law & Order,” died Monday at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, of natural causes. He was 83 years old.
the hollywood iconA regular on Fox channels, he returned to “Your World with Neil Cavuto” in January 2015 with the news that he was officially a married man again following a surprise New York wedding to his girlfriend, Dee Dee, a political strategist. .
Cavuto introduced the couple who “started out as guests on my Fox business show” before declaring, “They just got married and no one knew, right?”
The late actor Paul Sorvino joined Neil Cavuto on Fox News in January 2015 to announce that he married his wife Dee Dee Benkie in December 2014. The “Goodfellas” star died Monday of natural causes.
(FoxNews)
PAUL SORVINO, ‘GOODFELLAS’ ACTOR, DEAD AT 83
“We eloped standing in front of the fountain at Lincoln Center where I sang at the MET, and I sang at the New York Opera,” he told Cavuto.
“No one in your family knew about it?” Cavuto confirmed. “How do you feel now?”
Dee Dee quickly responded, “They’re happy.”
“The plan was that if we told one person, we would have to tell everyone,” Paul said. “As soon as the ceremony was over, I started calling my family and telling them.”
Cavuto joked, “It’s funny, you never called me. You know, it’s so weird… I hooked you up. Not even a call or anything!”
Dee Dee laughed as she confirmed that it was the journalist who first brought about her love match. “You’re responsible, already!”
Paul recalled seeing Dee Dee in the green room as they waited to appear separately in different time slots, a show he would never forget.
Neil Cavuto announced that Paul Sorvino and Dee Dee Benkie “started out as guests on my Fox business show” before they married in 2014.
(FoxNews)
“I saw her… she was wearing this beautiful blue dress and she had an aura around her,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. What I saw, what it was…I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ I was like, ‘This is going to be everything to me.'”
Their first date at the famous Del Frisco’s Steakhouse was equally memorable.
MIRA SORVINO, PAUL SORVINO’S DAUGHTER, REGRET ‘GOODFELLAS’ STAR: ‘HE WAS THE MOST WONDERFUL FATHER’
Sorvino recalled feeling an instant connection with Dee Dee, a former political adviser to President George W. Bush, during the romantic evening, and even putting his arm around Dee Dee during dinner.
“At a certain point, I realized that she didn’t hate me,” he joked, while she added, “I was being serious.”
When Cavuto asked Dee Dee why she chose Paul, her answer was easy.
Paul Sorvino kissed his wife Dee Dee during an episode of Neil Cavuto’s Fox show after revealing the couple first met in the green room. Sorvino died Monday of natural causes. He was 83 years old.
(FoxNews)
“He’s the real renaissance man,” she said, adding that he is a “wonderful cook, very sweet, very intelligent, he sings, he plays the piano…”
She liked that he was “a little older,” saying her family back home in Indiana she was equally excited to welcome him into their lives.
Sorvino recalled how he chased after Dee Dee for a year, something he had “never done” before, and after a performance of “King Lear” sought her out in the audience only to give her a big kiss in public.
They recreated the air kiss and laughed for the cameras.
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“Our hearts are broken, there will never be another Paul Sorvino, he was the love of my life and one of the greatest performers to ever grace screen and stage,” Dee Dee said in a statement about her. husband’s death on monday.
“I am completely devastated,” she wrote. separately on Twitter. “The love of my life and the most wonderful man who ever lived is gone. I am heartbroken.”
Sorvino was also the father of three children from his first marriage, including Mira, 54, an academy award winner. She also directed and starred in a film written by her daughter, Amanda Sorvino, which featured her son, Michael Sorvino.
“My father, the great Paul Sorvino, has passed away,” the actress tweeted. “My heart is in pieces – a lifetime of love, joy and wisdom with him is over. He was the most wonderful father. I love him so much. Sending you love in the stars dad as you rise.”
He was proud of Mira when she rose to Hollywood stardom and cried when she won the Oscar for best supporting actress for “Mighty Aphrodite” in 1996. That night he told the Los Angeles Times that he had no words to express how he felt. see her win the award most coveted by actors.
“They don’t exist in any language that I’ve heard, well, maybe Italian,” he said.
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