Caregivers, join AARP Creative Refresh for free to get a daily text with a simple activity to help you make time for yourself. Sign up here

Content starts here

Emmy Award-Winning Actress Susan Lucci Opens Up About Grieving Her Husband’s Death

The star’s husband, Helmut Huber, died in 2022

Greg Wakeman,

AARP

Published February 06, 2026

susan lucci and her husband helmut huber

“I thank God for creating Helmut Huber and for putting him on this earth — and in my life," Susan Lucci writes in her new memoir, "La Lucci." Huber died in March 2022.

LA LUCCI - Susan Lucci Personal Archive

Soap opera legend Susan Lucci, 79, is opening up about living with grief, following the death of her husband, Helmut Huber, 84, in March 2022.

“I realized that grief is not something you can really understand until you go through it — until you experience it. Until it’s your grief and you’re sitting in the front row at the funeral,” she writes in her new memoir, La Lucci, which was released on Feb. 3.

More Ways to Benefit

View All

Related Benefit 1
Related Benefit 2
Related Benefit 3
Related Benefit 4
Related Benefit 5

Huber had had a stroke and, after a month-long battle, died in March 2022. “I spent the whole month of March with Helmut, and I am forever grateful for the time I had with him every day. I felt lucky to share that time together,” Lucci writes.

the cover of susan luccis memoir la lucci

“La Lucci” is the moving follow-up to her 2011 memoir, “All My Life” and contains nearly one hundred never-before-seen photos.

Blackstone Publishing

Occasionally, Lucci admits to being unexpectedly flattened by grief. But she’s learned not to push those feelings down. “I don’t fight it,” the Emmy award-winning actor told People. “I’m surprised sometimes by it. Certainly, there are things like the holidays that are triggers — someone who should be sitting at the table. But I just go with it.”

In the years since Huber’s passing, the All My Children star has traveled around Europe and spent time with her family, especially her grandchildren. “I am looking for joy again,” Lucci writes.

Lucci and Huber, an Austrian-born producer and executive chef, married on Sept. 13, 1969. They had two children together, Liza, 50, and Andreas, 45. Four months after their wedding, in January 1970, Lucci made her debut as Erica Kane on All My Children. She’d portray the character for the next 41 years, until the soap opera’s final episode, on Sept. 23, 2011. Lucci famously (finally) won an Emmy in 1999 — her 19th nomination — after losing 18 times.

susan lucci in a scene from all my children

Lucci, here in 1989, played Erica Kane on “All My Children” from 1970 to 2011, earning her an Emmy.

ABC/Everett Collection

While Kane exchanged nuptials eight times on All My Children, in real life Lucci was utterly devoted to Huber. “The minute I fell in love like I did with my husband, I knew how vulnerable I was,” she told People. Lucci and Huber were so sure of their love that they dated for eight months before getting hitched.

Most Popular

Huber’s death, and her own cardiovascular issues in 2018 and 2022, led Lucci to become a prominent advocate for the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women initiative and the American Stroke Association. She tells women in particular to be their own advocates.

“Most women, myself included, do not put ourselves first on our to-do lists. We take care of our families, homes and careers, but we aren’t necessarily thinking of ourselves,” she told the American Heart Association in 2025. “But if your body’s not behaving in a way that’s normal to you, you have to act on it.”

After 52 years of marriage, Lucci felt “completely lost” when Huber died. Despite her friends and family showing constant support, she couldn’t shake the feeling of isolation. Having previously written 2011’s All My Life: A Memoir, Lucci decided the best way to deal with her grief was to open up about it. She began waking up “in the middle of the night” and writing down her candid, vulnerable thoughts on sorrow: “Things just started pouring out of me.” Much of La Lucci came to her while she slept.

susan lucci with her husband helmut huber

“I want to do the best I can with the gift of life I have been given. Choosing not to be sad all the time, to the extent I can, is a better choice than lying in a puddle on the floor," Lucci writes in "La Lucci."

Courtesy La Lucci

Mourning was much harder in the daytime. “I felt like half a person,” says Lucci. “I could hardly remember that I was an actress. It didn’t mean anything to me.” Lucci missed many things about Huber beyond just his presence, including not having coffee with him in the morning, his sense of humor and his Austrian accent.

When a friend told Lucci that she could decide how she grieved — and that she was allowed to feel joy again and keep living her life — Lucci decided she would. “You don’t know where you’re going to learn your lessons; you don’t know what things are going to be said to you to help you through,” she told USA Today.

As Lucci prepares for her 80th birthday on Dec. 23, Huber’s personal mantra continues to help her through every day: “After the rain, the sun she shines.… His words stick with me. He was really my rock.”

Gregory Wakeman is a contributing writer who has written for the BBC, New York Times, Guardian, National Geographic, and Smithsonian, as well as other publications.

AARP Membership

Join AARP for only $15 per year with automatic renewal. Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of benefits, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP The Magazine.

Join