REGIS PHILBIN’S DYING REGRETS
TV legend fighting heart disease and facing the end
RATTLED Regis Philbin is losing his battle with killer heart disease, leaving the TV icon desperate to mend fences with his former Live! co-star Kelly Ripa and the ex-wife of his crippled son, Danny, as he faces his final days, sources say.
The 87-yearold talk show legend admits he hasn’t seen Kelly since 2011 and is shattered by his daughter-in-law’s accusations he abandoned legless son Danny before he died.
“Regis desperately wants to make amends and heal all the wounds before he goes,” says a source close to the retired host.
“He especially wants to clear the air with Kelly and extend an olive branch to his daughter-in-law!”
As GLOBE has reported, the five-foot-seven star has shrunk health issues.
He’s had a hip replaced and a deadly blood clot cut from his calf. He also is fighting high cholesterol, high blood pressure and severe acid reflux.
But his heart is a major problem. Regis had an emergency angioplasty to unblock a blood vessel in his heart in 1993 and triple bypass surgery in 2007.
Now, a source says “he doesn’t have much longer. He’s very thin and pale. He puts on a brave front, but he knows his time is limited.
“He wants to face the end with a clear conscience!”
He claims Kelly was “very offended when I left” after 24 seasons of Live! due to his advancing age.
Reege also wants to make peace with former daughterin-law Judy Philbin, who claims he turned his back on his kids Danny and Amy from his first marriage to Catherine Faylen. Judy says his current wife, Joy, mom of his daughters Joanna, 45, and J.J., 44, wants nothing to do with them — which Regis has denied.
In 2009, Judy claimed she and Danny, whose legs were amputated due to a spinal birth defect, were broke and had to borrow money to eat.
Regis then reached out to them, but Judy, who divorced Danny four years before his 2014 death, says, “He never came to visit us.” But the source insists Regis wants to bury the past — before he goes into the ground.