While some of her early TV breakout roles include playing Pamela Williams in Beyond Westworld and Pam Davidson on The Greatest American Hero, Connie Sellecca is probably best known for playing Christine Francis on the primetime soap Hotel. The series, which also starred James Brolin, premiered in 1983 on ABC—airing right after Dynasty—and ran for five seasons.
Hotel revolved around the staff of the St. Gregory Hotel in San Francisco and featured dozens of guest stars as the hotel’s patrons. As the soap went on, Sellecca’s character eventually ended up running the hotel herself. Today, it’s been almost 40 years sinceHoteland Christine Francis made their debut. And Sellecca, 66, has long since taken a step back from Hollywood. Read on to find out what she’s doing today.
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After Hotel, Sellecca continued to act onscreen for another 20 years. Most notably, she starred in the TV series P.S.I Luv U, as well as many TV movies, including A Dangerous Affair and The Surrogate. Her final role was in 2012, appearing in the TV movie All About Christmas Eve alongside Haylie Duff and Stephen Colletti.
In the 10 years since, Sellecca has focused on other business ventures and her family. She started her own now-defunct skincare line called The Sellecca Solution, which was once available for purchase through QVC. In 1992, she married musician and TV personality John Tesh, and they’ve been together ever since.(Her first husband was Gil Gerard, who she was married to from 1979 to 1987.)
It was Sellecca’s faith that encouraged Tesh to become a born-again Christian, as he wrote in his Bible reading plan, Relentless. Thetopic came up on their first date.
“Connie suggested I might like her church. She told me that this was how she spent her Sundays, so if we wanted to spend what little free time each of us had together, I might want to consider giving it a try,” Tesh said. “I liked Connie, so of course, I was interested in her church. As it turned out, I would fall in love with Connie and her church.”
After Sellecca’s career in TV ended, her career in radio began. Her show, Intelligence For Your Health, is syndicated on radio stations all over the country and covers wellness topics including skincare, diet, and fitness. She also hosts Intelligence For Your Life TV with Tesh and her son, Gib Gerard, from her first marriage.
With Tesh and Sellecca married and working in radio together, it’s no surprise that she was chosen to introduce him when he was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2019. But after Sellecca was played off stage early, production cutting off her microphone and the lights in the room before she was finished with her speech, Tesh sent his award back.
“What happened the night of the Radio Hall of Fame to Connie Sellecca was a horrible mistake and I could not apologize more,” Susy Schultz, the executive director of the museum, said in a statement to Robert Feder. “Hers is a strong and important voice that should not be silenced. She is a woman with a successful multi-faceted career and a keen business sense who has navigated the worlds of acting, modeling, television, producing and digital broadcasting.”
Tesh and Sellecca also founded the the Sellecca-Tesh Foundation together. The organization provides patients with dementia and other neurological disorders with access to music therapy. Sellecca has been a spokesperson for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, as well.
In 2015, Tesh was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and though he initially struggled with his diagnosis, he credited Sellecca for helping him continue on.
“My wife knew how much I liked being by the ocean,” he told the San Diego Union Tribune in 2020. “Water is a big thing for me. So after every chemo treatment, we stay at the [Hotel del Coronado]. I hung out in the water and watched the Navy Seals suffer [in training].”
In 2021, Tesh told People that his cancer had returned in October 2020, and he was able to beat it again. Once again, he said that Sellecca played a huge role in his fight.
“If she hadn’t been my advocate and such a brilliant study of prostate cancer, I wouldn’t have made it,” he said. “We would go in and meet new doctors, and after about a half hour of talking they would turn to her and say, ‘Are you in the medical field?'”
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These days, Sellecca is living a much more private life than she did when she was a soap star. Her only social media presence is her her official Facebook page, where she states she is a mother and a grandmother. The 28-year-old daughter she shares with Tesh, Prima Tesh, is a pilates instructor and dancer and occasionally shares snaps of her family on her Instagram.
Sellecca rarely does interviews these days. But way back in 1990, she did speak fondly of her time on Hotel while talking to Orange Coast magazine.
“I simply loved doing Hotel. I loved the people—[producer] Aaron Spelling was wonderful to work with—I loved the cast and crew,” she said. “And our views were very respected and valued on the show. I also had an opportunity—not every week—but many times, to do interesting work, and I received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Series for some of it. Over the five years the series ran, we all did a lot of [growing] together. It became a large family, and like a family, we had deaths—losing Ann Baxter—and illnesses. One of the cast contracted cancer. Jim [Brolin] and I both got painful divorces, another couple got married.”
For now, it seems that Sellecca can be found most often on her radio show—and at Tesh’s side.
