Kathy Hilton's mother, Kathy Richards, was quite the character and her nickname, "Big Kathy," should give you a clearer idea of her personality. Big Kathy's first marriage was to Larry Avanzino after they conceived young Kathy in 1957, as Jerry Oppenheimer wrote in his book "House of Hilton." The marriage didn't last but the mother-daughter bond was set.
A review of Oppenheimer's book by The New York Times sums up Big Kathy's various antics. Allegedly, she later began an affair with Ken Richards and when his first wife, Evelyn, confronted her about it, Big Kathy drugged her, then crushed her ankle in a car door. Later, she tried to push her then-second husband Richards down a flight of stairs and when she was displeased with one of his daughters from a previous marriage, she fed the daughter a burger with a screw hidden inside of it. Not exactly a Norman Rockwell painting of family bliss.
Despite this side, her daughters genuinely adored their mother. Big Kathy died in 2002 of breast cancer, per People, and daughter Kyle Richards shared how much she admired her mother. "My mom was a very strong, outspoken woman and in that time, women weren't supposed to be like that," she explained. "Now it's like, 'boss lady' — that's a term now. But in the '70s, if you were strong and opinionated and outspoken, it was looked down upon." Clearly, Big Kathy was way ahead of her time and her daughters knew it.
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