In 2008, a Brooklyn waitress walked up to Sir Patrick Stewart’s table and offered him dessert on the house. Patrick Stewart was married three times, and that waitress, the singer-songwriter Sunny Ozell, was his wife when he died on 28 October 2026, aged 86.
They married on 7 September 2013 beside Lake Tahoe, Nevada, and his friend Ian McKellen officiated.
He died at home in Los Angeles. His representative, Kelly Bush Novak, said he died “in the loving care of his beloved wife Sunny,” WJLA reported.
He had announced the wedding in two words: “Yes, married.” The photo with it showed the newlyweds in a ball pit, BroadwayWorld noted at the time.
Years later, he told the rest of the story. They had first married at a late dinner in California.
Who was Patrick Stewart married to? In order, as Newsweek lists them:
Sheila Falconer, a dancer and choreographer: married in 1966, divorced in 1990. Their children are Daniel, born in 1967, and Sophie, born in 1972.
Wendy Neuss, a television producer on Star Trek: The Next Generation: married in 2000, divorced in 2003.
Sunny Ozell: married in September 2013.
He is survived by Ozell and by Daniel and Sophie, ABC7 News reported.
The third marriage was the one that lasted to the end.
Stewart told the story to People in 2022. “This lovely woman came over and said, ‘Gentleman, on the house, what would you like for desserts?’”
They got talking. She had wanted to see his Macbeth, but the Brooklyn run had sold out.
“Well, we’re going to Broadway next,” he told her. “It was the only time in my life I’ve given someone my telephone number and said, ‘Call me, I can get a ticket.’”
She came backstage afterwards. “We had dinner and here we are.”
The restaurant was Franny’s, which has since closed, and Macbeth was playing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Mamamia reported.
Ozell was born on 23 December 1978 and grew up in Reno, Nevada, her Wikipedia entry records.
She took up the violin at four and sings jazz, blues and American roots music. Her albums include Take It with Me (2015) and Overnight Lows (2020).
A Stewart spokesman told the Associated Press on the Monday that the couple had married on the Saturday at Lake Tahoe, in a report carried by the Christian Science Monitor.
His post went up on Sunday 8 September, which is why some reports give that date.
For the Reno-raised bride, Nevada was home ground.
The two men were working together that summer. Their No Man’s Land closed at Berkeley Rep on 31 August, a week before the wedding, BroadwayWorld reported. Broadway came next.
McKellen shared his own photo on Facebook, holding a certificate and a shirt printed “Minister”. His caption: “I did my part.”
He had promised it in March 2013 on The Jonathan Ross Show. “I am going to officiate at his wedding,” he said, ABC News reported.
He was unsure how he could legally do it, but thought that in “America, somewhere” it would be simple.
It was not that simple. Stewart told the story on Jimmy Kimmel Live in March 2020, as USA Today reported. “We learned that (McKellen) could not use his credentials in Nevada, where we were getting married,” he said.
So, he said, they took McKellen, “our other two guests and a director” to dinner at a Mexican restaurant in California. “They were really closing down when we got there, it was pretty late,” Stewart said.
McKellen had brought “a kind of robe”. The guests, Stewart said, “had no idea what was happening.”
“And in fact, we were formally married in a Mexican restaurant.”
The Nevada wedding came later. Of McKellen’s words there, Stewart said, “(It) was so moving. I looked out and the audience were wiping their (eyes).”
So which ceremony counts? By Stewart’s own account, the restaurant made it formal, and the lake had the speech.
He never said why California worked where Nevada did not, or when that dinner was. The date on record is the one his spokesman gave, 7 September 2013.
Yes. In 2024 he wrote, “Happy 11th anniversary to my dear Sunny. You make everything better and brighter, my love,” as AOL reported. Their 13th anniversary fell on 7 September 2026, seven weeks before he died.
The statement said he had Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia, and that he had been held by family and friends, “surrounded by live music, prayer, tears, laughter.”
In lieu of flowers, it asked for gifts to the Johns Hopkins Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Fund and to the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America’s caregiver resources.
No. They were never married to each other; McKellen was the friend who married Stewart to Ozell. They had been friends for nearly 50 years, since the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1970s, TODAY reported.
On stage they shared Waiting for Godot and, in 2013, No Man’s Land. On screen, they were co-stars across the X-Men films.
After Stewart’s death, McKellen wrote on X: “Before everything else, Patrick was defined by being born and bred in Yorkshire.” Stewart was born in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, in 1940, and joined the RSC in 1966.
“He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love,” McKellen wrote.
McKellen, a friend since the 1970s, said the words over their marriage, and he did it twice.
If you would like a close friend to lead your own vows, ask the office that registers marriages where you marry whether that friend can make it legal. Ask early, as the rules differ from place to place.
Read more famous wedding stories in our celebrity weddings and trending coverage.
It started with a free dessert in Brooklyn and a phone number for a sold-out play. Eighteen years after the dessert, thirteen after the lake, his own two words still answer the question. Yes, married.
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Content and Creative Manager | Wonder Group
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