Days of Our Lives and General Hospital actor Robert Kelker-Kelly has died. He was 62.
The St. Peters Police Department in Missouri responded on Saturday, October 3, to a report of an unconscious male who was not breathing, Us can confirm. The male was identified as Kelker-Kelly.
CPR was in progress while authorities responded. When officers arrived on the scene, additional life-saving measures were administered but were ultimately unsuccessful.
Us can confirm that St. Charles County Ambulance District paramedics responded to a report of a male in cardiac arrest. Advanced Life Support measures were initiated, but the actor was pronounced dead on-scene by paramedics.
Before becoming unresponsive, Kelker-Kelly had reportedly complained of chest pain. The circumstances appeared consistent with a medical event, and nothing suspicious was noted at the scene.
Kelker-Kelly’s body was released by the Medical Examiner to a local funeral home. An official cause of death is unknown at the time of publication. (TMZ was the first to report the news on Monday, October 5.)
Kelker-Kelly rose to fame after joining Days of Our Lives in 1992, where he took over the role of Bo Brady from Peter Reckell. Kelker-Kelly appeared as Bo for three years, starring opposite Kristian Alfondo (Hope Brady) and Lisa Rinna (Billie Reed).
Reckell reprised his role in 1995, the same year Kelker-Kelly and Rinna earned a Soap Opera Digest Award for Hottest Soap Couple. After Kelker-Kelly’s exit from Days of Our Lives in 1995, he went on to play Stavros Cassadine on General Hospital.
Kelker-Kelly also appeared in several episodes of the TV series Another World, where he portrayed a number of characters, including Sam Fowler, Bobby Reno and Shane Roberts. Kelker-Kelly ultimately retired from acting and became a professional pilot before his death.
Earlier this year, Rinna made headlines when she reflected on her dynamic with Kelker-Kelly in her memoir, You Better Believe I’m Gonna Talk About It. In the book, which hit shelves in February, Rinna claimed that the former Days of Our Lives costars did not get along off screen. (Kelker-Kelly did not publicly respond to Rinna’s allegations at the time.)
“Behind the scenes, we hated each other,” Rinna wrote in People’s excerpt at the time. “Remember when Kathy Hilton said I was the biggest bully in Hollywood? Not true. Not even close! I have legit stories about the real bullies in this town. Robert Kelker-Kelly is one of those bullies.”
“He made my life a living hell on the set of Days. He was horrible to me,” she continued. “I’d go so far as to say verbally abusive. He was passive-aggressive, manipulative and played weird mind games.”
Rinna recalled that she and Kelker-Kelly filmed together “every day, often half naked” for their scenes as a couple — which the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star found difficult.
“If I didn’t do what he wanted, he’d give me the silent treatment,” she alleged. “He was a ticking time bomb. I never knew when I arrived on set each morning if I’d get nice Robert Kelker-Kelly or dark Robert Kelker-Kelly. He was unpredictable and it was exhausting.”
