Dede Robertson Dead at 94
Dede Robertson, the wife of religious broadcaster Pat Robertson and a founding board member of the Christian Broadcasting Network and Regent University, has died.
The network said in a statement that Robertson died Tuesday at her home in Virginia Beach.
Robertson was 94. The network did not provide her cause of death.
“Mrs. Robertson was a profound inspiration to the students, faculty, and staff of Regent University. Our thoughts and prayers are with Dr. Robertson and his family,” Regent University said in a Facebook post.
Robertson became a born-again Christian several months after her husband found his faith. The couple met at Yale University in 1952.
He later ran for president of the United States in 1988, with his wife campaigning by his side.
Adelia “Dede” Elmer was born in Columbus, Ohio, to middle-class Catholic Republicans. She got her bachelor’s degree from Ohio State and a master’s in nursing from Yale.
Robertson’s future husband was the son of a Southern Baptist, Democratic U.S. senator. Eighteen months after meeting, they ran off to be married by a justice of the peace, knowing that neither family would approve.
Robertson’s husband was interested in politics until he found religion, she told The Associated Press in 1987. He stunned her by pouring out their liquor, tearing a nude print off the wall and declaring he had found the Lord.
They moved into the commune in Bedford-Stuyvesant because Robertson said God had told him to sell all his possessions and minister to the poor. Robertson told The AP she was tempted to go back to Ohio, “but I realized that was not what the Lord would have me do … I had promised to stay, so I did.”
