The British Virgin air stewardess who saved Frasier from his sexless marriage to a bunny girl
AS Dr Frasier Crane in the smash-hit comedy series Cheers and Frasier, he was everyone’s favourite neurotic shrink. For more than two decades, actor Kelsey Grammer embodied a role which brought joy to millions – and, at Frasier’s height, saw him take home more than £1million per episode.
But off-screen, 60-year-old Grammer’s life has been far from a Hollywood fairytale. His estranged father was shot and killed when he was just 13; his sister Karen was raped and murdered in 1975. Just five years later, his two halfbrothers were killed in a freak scuba-diving accident.
It’s hardly surprising that his personal life has been something of a disaster, with years of cocaine and alcohol abuse, not to mention three stormy and short-lived marriages – to a stripper, a Playboy model and a dance instructor.
So when, in 2011, Grammer announced he was getting married for a fourth time to a British air hostess 26 years his junior, not many in Hollywood gave the relationship much chance of success.
Yet against all odds, Kayte Grammer – the 34-year-old daughter of former Bristol City footballer Alan Walsh – has managed to tame the wild man of American comedy, as she reveals today in her first-ever newspaper interview.
The couple live a life of cosy – if luxurious – domesticity with their two children, Faith, nearly three, and nine-month-old Gabriel.
Indeed, when we meet, it turns out that the erstwhile hellraising actor has been up since 5am changing nappies.
Stranger still, Kayte reveals how she demanded her new husband go through no fewer than five marriage ceremonies with her – as if to atone for previous ‘errors’.
It has been quite a journey for Kayte from Somerset schoolgirl to chatelaine of three homes – a New York apartment, a farm in upstate New York and a £15million mansion in Holmby Hills, an ultra exclusive enclave of Los Angeles.
Born in Hartlepool, the second of four children, Kayte’s childhood was spent moving around the country.
She says: ‘When I was three my dad got a contract with Bristol City so we moved to a small town called Clevedon and then to Portishead, on the outskirts of Bristol. Then when I was eight, Dad got a contract to play in Istanbul for two years.’
At 23, after stints as a barmaid in France and a job working in a bakery in Greece, she joined Virgin Atlantic. It was as Grammer was taking his seat in Virgin Atlantic Upper Class on a flight from LA to London, that her life took a decisive turn.
She is well used to people joking about stewardesses on the ‘lookout’, but this, she insists, was different. It was ‘love at first sight’.
‘I saw him and we looked at each other and smiled. It was like as if he had this golden glow around him. He came and sat at the bar, and we chatted about music and England. I was blown away by how lovely he was.’
The actor slipped her his phone number but, perhaps not surprisingly, Kayte says that she was ‘torn’ about calling him. She knew he was married – to former Playboy pin-up Camille Donatacci, a typical product of the Hollywood ‘glamour’ machine complete with breast implants and ‘frozen’ Botox face.
Camille has since achieved her own modicum of fame in the TV reality show, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
Kayte recalls travelling to London on a bus a couple of days later for a hair appointment: ‘He told me where he was staying but I was indecisive.
‘I said: “God, if I’m meant to call him, I want a sign. I looked out the bus window and saw a sign reading, “Frasier Suites”. I was like: “OK, that’s not enough.”
‘Four minutes later, we passed an art store called Crane and a few moments later, we drove past the hotel where he was staying.’ The pair met for coffee two days later.
It is a script that might seem implausible even for a Hollywood rom-com – it certainly wouldn’t make one of Frasier’s sharply observed satires – but Kayte continues, unabashed.
‘It was lovely. We walked around Hyde Park and it started snowing. He told me that he was in a situation he wasn’t happy in and I needed to be patient. We kept in touch.’
Grammer – currently appearing on Broadway in the hit musical Finding Neverland written by Take That’s Gary Barlow – has previously insisted the relationship did not progress beyond hand-holding and kissing for several months, as he wrestled with how to protect his two children with Camille in a divorce.
But eventually they became a couple. If Kayte had been unaware of Grammer’s colourful private life, the details now came tumbling out.
An outraged Camille says she only found out about her husband’s mistress when she arrived at their New York apartment to be told by the doorman that ‘Mrs Grammer’ was already in residence.
An unseemly war of words ensued, with Camille claiming to have been dumped by text and questioning Grammer’s ability in the bedroom.
She even claimed that he enjoyed dressing in women’s clothing, an allegation he later responded to, saying: ‘Never been a cross-dresser but I have been very sexually adventurous. I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve done in the bedroom.’
He later accused his ex-wife of craving fame, saying, ‘She married me because I was Frasier’ and adding the marriage was ‘so broken we’d not had sex in a decade’.
It is a subject Kayte, understandably, finds uncomfortable: ‘I wasn’t prepared for the public scrutiny or the comments I read. When I read some of the hurtful things, I thought: “Well, you don’t know the truth.” Kelsey and I knew the truth, and we have always been honest with each other. The truth was we were in love.’
But you knew he was married? ‘There’s nothing I can say to that,’ she says. ‘ Every relationship is different. And we fell in love. I don’t know the right way to say it…’ Her voice trails off.
Then there are Grammer’s other relationships. The actor’s first marriage to Broadway dancer Doreen Alderman was officially dissolved in 1990, after eight years, although the relationship was effectively over after less than 12 months.
The couple chose to stay together for the sake of their daughter Spencer, now a 31-year-old actress who stars in a remake of the 1960s cop show Ironside.
Grammer’s second marriage was to former stripper Leigh-Anne Csuhany, whom he met in the bar in which she worked. The actor later claimed that almost as soon as the relationship began his volatile wife started beat-
ing him up. They married in 1992 with the groom sporting a black eye from an attack, and the union disintegrated after nine months.
In his autobiography, he wrote: ‘To be sure I’d never leave her, Leigh-Anne had to convince me I was nothing: unattractive, untalented, undeserving of love and incapable of being loved by anyone but her.
‘She’d spit in my face, slap me, punch me, kick me, break glasses over my head, break windows, tear up pictures of my loved ones, threaten to kill me or herself.’
As the marriage imploded, he began an affair with make-up artist Barrie Buckner and she bore him a daughter, Greer, now 23. Shortly after their split, Leigh-Anne attempted to commit suicide and miscarried his baby.
Grammer went on to have a series of short-lived relationships, including one with Playboy model Tammi Alexander, before he met Camille for yet another troubled union.
By contrast, Kayte is a natural English beauty made more attractive by her lack of airs and graces. She arrives with no entourage, wear- ing a simple yet expensive looking outfit of white jeans and designer black top.
She talks openly about having to cope with the public scepticism over the couple’s 26-year age gap and condemnation for the fact Kelsey was still married to Camille when they met in December 2009.
Of the age gap, she says: ‘He’s in great shape. We have a joke. I say I feel eight years old inside and he says he feel six. He loves life. He’s a wonderful father to his children.’
Grammer’s children with Camille – Mason, 13, and Jude, ten – spend alternate weeks with their father in LA: ‘They are lovely kids and they adore their father so much and he adores them.’
She says that her marriage has been strengthened by the heartbreak they have endured together. Two pregnancies have ended in miscarriage while Faith’s unborn sibling died in utero.
‘It was devastating,’ Kayte says. ‘But it’s life. Everything is a life experience. Life is a miracle. I enjoy every day. I wake up every morning and count my blessings.’ The couple are so besotted with one another that Kelsey has a tattoo of his wife’s name on his hip, while Kayte reveals they have conducted a series of secret wedding ceremonies: ‘Because he’s been married so many times before, I said: “You have to marry me more times.” I’m his fourth wife, so I said: “You have to marry me at least five times.”
The first wedding took place in New York six months after they met – and days after his $30 million divorce from Camille. The second came months later when the couple married in a Elvis-style ‘Viva Las Vegas’ ceremony.
The third was a ceremony in their LA home so Mason and Jude could attend. The fourth took place in tribute to Kayte’s favourite artwork, Monet’s Bridge Over A Pond Of Water Lilies, painted in the artist’s garden in Giverny, north-west of Paris.
Kayte says: ‘Kelsey knows I love that painting. We went to Paris and he organised a day out without telling me where we were going. We ended up in Giverny.
‘As we saw the bridge in Monet’s garden, he got down on one knee and proposed again. It was a complete shock. Kelsey had arranged everything with the Mayor so we got to say our vows in French. It was lovely.’
It is clear Kayte cannot believe her good fortune to find the man she calls ‘the love of my life’. But, equally, Grammer – who is two years older than Kayte’s father – has credited his wife with teaching him how to love again.
A shadow flits across her face when asked about Grammer’s state of mind when they fell in love. ‘The first thing he told me was he was in a situation he wasn’t happy in and things were going to change. Kelsey always has a positive outlook on life, even when things aren’t going well. He wasn’t happy and he was going to change his life regardless of whether I came along. But I did come along.’
Today, their life is a far cry from the decades in which Grammer buried his sadness with addictions and unstable relationships.
‘Our favourite place is our sofa,’ reveals Kayte. ‘It’s deep and comfy and swallows you up. We normally end up snuggling in to watch a movie with popcorn and fall asleep.’
She calls him ‘Pop’, though she insists the name comes from his love of popcorn, rather than any suggestion Grammer is a father figure. In return, he calls her ‘babe’ or ‘honey’.
They don’t mingle with celebrities: ‘Of course Kelsey keeps in touch with people he’s worked with – some of whom happen to be famous – but that’s not our life. Our life is very normal and low-key,’ she says.
‘As a general rule I try to operate from love. I always wanted to find a family and the love of my life. That was my dream. I feel blessed.’
He dropped to his knee and proposed... in Monet’s garden