Wife of ‘700 Club’ Televangelist Dede Robertson Dies At 94

Adelia “Dede” Robertson, the first lady of the Christian Broadcasting Network, died Tuesday at her home in Virginia Beach. The wife of famed “700 Club” televangelist Pat Robertson was 94.

Her passing was confirmed in a statement from the network they both founded and helmed for nearly seven decades, although no official cause of death was disclosed.

“Dede Robertson was a woman of great faith, a champion of the Gospel, and a remarkable servant of Christ who has left an indelible print on all that she set her hand to during her extraordinary life,” said Pat, 92, in a statement.

Born Dede Elmer on December 3, 1927, in Columbus, Ohio, she later graduated from Ohio State University where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Social Administration. She worked as a fashion model and beauty queen and was eventually crowned Miss Ohio State.

Dede continued her education at the Yale University School of Nursing, where she received a master of nursing degree — and she met M.G. “Pat” Robertson, a student at Yale Law School, in 1952.

The couple ran off to be married by a justice of the peace in 1954 — knowing neither her Catholic parents nor his South Baptist brood would approve — and embarked on a journey that included living in a roach-infested commune in New York before Pat bought a tiny TV station in Virginia that over the decades they would grow into the CBN empire.

Robertson’s husband was interested in politics until he found religion, she told the Associated Press in 1987. He stunned her by pouring out their booze, ripping a nude print off the wall — and declaring he had accepted Christ into his heart.

They moved into the commune in Bedford-Stuyvesant because Robertson said God had told him to sell all his possessions and minister to the poor.

Robertson told The AP she was tempted to go back to Ohio, “but I realized that was not what the Lord would have me do … I had promised to stay, so I did.”

Pat later “heard God” tell him to buy the small TV station in Portsmouth, Virginia, which would become a global religious broadcasting network.

With Dede’s dedicated support, he ran the network’s flagship program, the “700 Club,” for half a century before stepping down in the fall of 2021.

Robertson is survived by her husband and her four children: Elizabeth, Gordon, Timothy, and Ann Le, as well as 14 grandchildren, and 23 great-grandchildren.