Bob Ross didn't make his personal life public, so his fans didn't even know about his lymphoma
diagnosis until after his death. But this is what we now know about the last year of his life.
Although he loved to share his happy trees, clouds,
and hills with his legions of faithful viewers, Bob Ross kept his personal life mostly to himself.
He wasn't big on interviews, though he claimed it was because nobody was interested, once saying,
"I never turn down requests for interviews. I'm just rarely asked."
He liked to show people how to paint landscapes and then return to his comfortable obscurity.
And this characteristic led him to keep a secret from his fans for the last few years of his life.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, after his death in 1995, a spokeswoman for his company,
Bob Ross Inc., said in a statement that the happy-go-lucky artist had
actually been struggling with lymphoma for years.
Still, some viewers suspected something was wrong due to the fact that his show
"The Joy of Painting" went into reruns for what turned out to be the final year of his life.
Despite his legendary status in the annals of pop culture history today,
much of the rest of his personal life remains something of a mystery, as well.
His desire for privacy, combined with the lack of interest on the part of journalists,
has led to quite a bit of disinformation about him on the internet.
Some biographies claim Ross married twice, and the names of his wives are frequently mixed up,
but it appears he actually married a third time just before he died.
Naturally, his obituary in The New York Times mentions his second wife, Jane, who died in 1993.
"My wife Jane, she's stood behind us and
kept this thing going, and it takes a special lady to live with a crazy man."
But there's no mention in the obituary of this third wife,
Lynda. And that may be in part because the truth is a bombshell.
Though the general public didn't know about Ross's cancer diagnosis, people in
his inner circle certainly did, including his longtime business partners Annette and Walter
Kowalski. The Kowalskis had founded Bob Ross Inc. alongside Bob and Jane Ross. But when Jane died,
her share of the company was split evenly between the three remaining partners,
meaning that suddenly Bob Ross had a minority stake in himself.
According to the Daily Beast, a 2018 lawsuit brought by Bob Ross's son Steve Ross
finally exposed the terrible truth: while Bob Ross was dying of cancer,
the Kowalskis used every means available to them to pressure Bob into signing over
all his rights to them. Ross eventually changed his will to try and thwart their plans and ensure
Steve got his fair share. It's been rumored that Ross' last days marriage to Lynda was in
part a legal strategy to try and protect his legacy from exploitation by the Kowalskis.
It didn't work.
In 2016, Annette Kowalski spun a gleaming story to NPR about the painter's final days,
after he learned the diagnosis was terminal. She said the two would sit on a bench outside
the hospital where he was being treated. One day, as the two looked out over a nearby lake,
Annette claims Bob became uncharacteristically open with his feelings about her.
"Bob was not always full of compliments, but he said to me,
'Annette, you are the wind beneath my wings.' And that is what I'm left with
and it means so much to me. He was really wonderful. I want Bob back."
That's not all she was left with, though.
She and her husband Walter leveraged Bob's name to expand both his popularity and their
profit margins. And after turning the company over to their daughter Joan Kowalski, things
got even more lucrative thanks to a platform that didn't even exist when he died: YouTube.
Yes, the official Bob Ross The Joy of Painting channel has just under five million subscribers,
and his videos regularly rack up seven- and eight-digit view tallies. Driven in part to
his newfound viral fame, the Kowalskis have also approved his image to be featured on products
like clothing, costumes, Chia Pets, puzzles, soaps, coloring books, and other items, further
increasing his popularity well into the 21st century. His original paintings are also prized
items that sometimes sell for thousands of dollars — and the Kowalskis own a whole warehouse of them.
But his family doesn't get a dime of it.
Just how much money Ross had at the time of his death is unclear.
PBS probably isn't on the top of most people's lists of how to strike it rich. But Ross' show
was a huge success for the channel, and not just in the United States; "The Joy of Painting" was
also syndicated in Canada, Latin America, and Europe, boasting millions of weekly viewers
As a result of that celebrity, the art supply company he formed with the Kowalskis took off,
and Celebrity Net Worth estimates that everyone's
favorite art teacher was worth a cool $10 million at the time of his death.
Ross really didn't make any money from the show itself. He basically did the public broadcasting
gig for free. But the show was the perfect ad campaign for his line of painting kits,
video tapes, and how-to painting books. His income from these products during
his lifetime was anywhere from $15-20 million.
Now, though, given the massive boom in Bob Ross merchandising and licensing,
it's impossible to say how much the Kowalskis are making off of Ross's legacy. We do know, however,
how much his son Steve is making from it: nothing. Ultimately. Steve Ross lost his lawsuit and,
in a twist of irony, did not have the money for any further legal action, forcing him to settle.
That settlement gives the Kowalskis full control over the Bob Ross name and likeness,
while the only concession to Steve is that he is allowed to run his own seminars teaching
regular people how to paint — something they had barred him from doing for over two decades.
Which seems fitting in a way. The Kowalskis may have the merch and
the money, but there's no question who is actually carrying on Ross' legacy.
"Before Dad died he had said, 'you must continue,' that was his last words to me."
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