During her first interview since the death of her husband, Bob Saget, Kelly Rizzo got visibly emotional as she remembered the late comedian and their final moments together.
“He put it all out there. He told everyone that he loved, and I mean, quite frankly anyone he met — even spend any time with at all — he told them he loved them endlessly, and tirelessly, and that was his entire message,” the 42-year-old food blogger began on the Today show on Thursday, January 20. “If you knew Bob, and he loved you, you knew it. There was never ever a doubt in your mind. I mean, even at his memorial, there were a lot of people there and every single person was pretty much like, ‘Oh, I talked to Bob last week.’ I’m like, ‘How did he have the time to talk to everybody and tell everybody that he loved them? All the time.’ It was just amazing.”
Saget was found dead in his Orlando, Florida, hotel room on January 9. The 65-year-old stand-up performed a show hours before he passed. On Thursday, Rizzo began to cry when Hoda Kotb informed her that Saget’s friend Mike Young told the host that the Full House alum always “wanted to catch the first flight” home after shows to be with his family.
“What was always so special is every time he would be out of town, he would always try to,” she said. “He loved to sleep in, but when he was away. … He would go to bed at 2 a.m. and then wake up at 4 a.m., so he could be on the 6 a.m. flight so he could come home and just so we could spend time together. We valued every single second that we had together. That’s why, you know, this is so heartbreaking.”
Rizzo continued: “But at the same time, I know that every second that we had together was just maximized to the fullest and we absolutely — there was nothing left unsaid, and nothing left on the table. So those are things that I’m just trying to hold onto.”
According to Rizzo, Saget was “very happy” and “thrilled” to be performing again before his untimely death. “He was also very sensitive and just all the weight of everything going on in the world right now, [it] was just weighing very heavily on him,” she explained. “That’s why he felt more compelled than ever to make people laugh and bring people together and he did it up until the very last moment.”
When asked about their final conversation, Rizzo told Kotb that she’s “very grateful” it was full of love, as usual.
“I think I said, ‘I love you dearly.’ And he said, ‘I love you endlessly,’” she recalled. “And then I said, ‘I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.’ … It was just all love.”
Saget is also survived by his three daughters whom he shared with his ex-wife, Sherri Kramer. His funeral, which included his Full House costars, took place on January 14.
“He had three life’s works. One was his children. Next was comedy and then the SRF,” Rizzo concluded, referring to Scleroderma Research Foundation. (According to the Today show, Saget raised over $26 million for the cause that took his sister Gay’s life.) “He spent over 30 years tirelessly working so hard to try to find a cure for Scleroderma. So that’s why anything that I can do to help keep that legacy going and just help with the SRF because it meant so much to him.”
