Singer Taylor Dayne learned about longtime friend Kirstie Alley‘s death with the rest of the world on Monday. Dayne was diagnosed with colon cancer in July, the same type of cancer that took Alley’s life after it was “only recently discovered.” Alley was 71.
In an interview with The Daily Beast, Dayne said she hopes to raise awareness about how common colon cancer is as she urged people to get a colonoscopy at age 40.
“You think about people like Chadwick [Boseman] and Kirstie and it is so sad because they didn’t catch it in time,” she said.
Boseman died in 2020 after a private battle with colon cancer. He was only 43.
“I say stay on top of your health, get your mammograms, get a colonoscopy at 40. I don’t think you have to wait until 50,” Dayne continued. “This is not ageist.”
The “Tell It to My Heart” singer, 60, and Alley met at a Super Bowl party in Florida and were friends for 25 years.
“She was just so funny, exuberant, full of life. She was like, ‘Come back to my house.’ I think we were in Tampa. I really loved that woman,” Dayne recalled of the Cheers star. “She was a truly lovely, beautiful human being who brought a lot of joy and a lot of fun and a lot of happiness and was very truthful and honest with her life.”
Dayne was diagnosed with colon cancer after a routine colonoscopy so it was caught early. She went public with her private battle last month.
“I was prone to developing polyps, so I was more on top of it, but five months after my last colonoscopy I had another one done in July, and that’s when I found out,” she shared. Weeks later, Dayne had surgery to remove 10 inches of her colon.
“I tried a million alternative things, as well as the surgery, which did save my life. I was cancer-free within a couple of days but the hard part was the recuperation and the healing. I just got off antibiotics literally within the last day or two,” she explained.
Alley’s death was announced by her children, True and Lillie Parker, whom she shared with ex-husband Parker Stevenson. They thanked Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa for providing their “fierce and loving mother” with care at the end of her life.
“She was surrounded by her closest family and fought with great strength, leaving us with a certainty of her never-ending joy of living and whatever adventures lie ahead. As iconic as she was on screen, she was an even more amazing mother and grandmother,” they said in their statement.
Alley has been remembered by many people in the industry, including John Travolta, Jamie Lee Curtis and Cheers co-stars Ted Danson and Kelsey Grammer.
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