Phyllis George net worth
Phyllis George Net Worth: Phyllis George is an American businesswoman, actress, sports presenter and beauty pageant winner. Phyllis George died with a net worth of $100 million. Phyllis passed away on May 14, 2020 at the age of 70. During her lifetime, she won the Miss America pageant, was the first lady of Kentucky, started and sold a business, and was a pioneering female sports presenter.
Phyllis George was born in Denton, Texas in June 1949. She was Miss Texas in 1970 and Miss America in 1971. During her time as Miss America, she appeared on a number of talk shows, including The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. She also co-hosted Candid and returned to Miss America as the pageant host. In 1975, CBS hired Phyllis to host NFL Today with Brent Musburger and Irv Cross. She played for three seasons in the NFL, returning in 1980 and leaving in 1983. She is known for her one-on-one interviews with the era’s star athletes such as Roger Staubach and Joe Namath.
She became the anchor of CBS Morning News in 1985, but resigned less than a year later. She still managed to get some very noteworthy interviews during this brief time, including with First Lady Nancy Reagan.
personal life: In the mid-1970s, Phyllis was briefly married to filmmaker Robert Evans. In 1979, she married entrepreneur John Y. Brown, Jr., a major investor in the KFC Fried Chicken Company and owner of the Boston Celtics NBA franchise. Soon after their wedding John was elected Governor of Kentucky, so Phyllis served as Kentucky’s first lady from 1979 to 1983.
John Y. Brown became interested in the fast food restaurant thanks to his first wife who ran a barbecue restaurant. In 1963, he met Colonel Harland Sanders, the founder of the KFC Fried Chicken Company. In 1964, Brown, along with investor Jack C. Massey, bought the rights to KFC from the Colonel for $2 million, or $17 million in today’s dollars. Brown and Massey transformed the chain into a fast-food model and expanded to more than 1,500 locations nationwide. In 1971, John Y. Brown sold his stake in the company for $284 million. That’s the equivalent of $1.8 billion in today’s dollars.
Commercial interests: In 1986, Phyllis herself started Chicken by George, a company that makes chicken fillets, and she also got into the chicken business herself. Two years after its launch, she sold the company to Hormel Foods for an undisclosed amount. In 1991, she was awarded the Celebrity Female Entrepreneur of the Year award.
In 2003, she founded Phyllis George Beauty, a marketer of cosmetics and skincare products sold through HSN.
During her lifetime, Phyllis George wrote or co-authored five books.
