The Cars frontman Ric Ocasek and supermodel Paulina Porizkova, 54, were married for nearly thirty years. Even though they announced their separation in 2018, pair hadn’t divorced and was still living together when he passed away at age 75 on Sept. 15, 2019. His cause of death was later ruled to be from heart disease and emphysema. Paulina found out the day after he died that Ric left her nothing in his will, and in her first TV interview since his passing, she says she still feels “betrayed.”
“It made the grieving process really, really tricky,” Paulina told CBS This Morning co-host Anthony Mason, in an interview to that will air on the network’s Sunday Morning on March 1. “I would love to be able to be sad and miss him, and not also feel this incredible hurt and betrayal.” She also revealed that when she brought him his morning coffee and touched his cheek, realizing he had passed in his sleep, was “the worst moment of my life.”
Less than a month before his death, Ric changed his will to exclude Paulina from getting anything. In paperwork obtained by Page Six in Nov. 2019, he wrote, “I have made no provision for my wife Paulina Porizkova (‘Paulina’) as we are in the process of divorcing. Even if I should die before our divorce is final…Paulina is not entitled to any elective share…because she has abandoned me,” he added.
Paulina responded by posting an Instagram photo from happier times with her husband and their two sons Jonathan, 26, and Oliver, 21, who appeared to be in their early teens in the pic. She wrote in the caption, “I’ve known about the will since the day after Ric passed. All you have heard from me since – is in spite of that. #loveneverdies.”
“Ric and I have been separated for nearly three years now. But we still lived together and still filled the family car,” Paulina revealed in a lengthly Instagram tribute post on Oct. 10, 2019. “His smile and his gaze warmed you and made you feel like the most special person in the world. I had that gaze and smile on me for most of my life. For a long long time, no one could make me feels as loved as Ric. He was my sun,” she wrote next to a black and white photo of the couple from their 80s heyday as one of music and modeling’s “It” couples.
“Our separation didn’t alter this one bit. He was rising and setting and I planned my life around it as one does a day: depending on the position of the sun in the sky: you’ll have breakfast or go to work or dinner with your friends. His death is the end of my world as I knew it. 💔 💔💔💔💔#ricocasek #grief #goodbye ,” she concluded her tribute post.