Pioneer Mary Tyler Moore dies at 80

Mary Tyler Moore died Wednesday, Jan. 25, at age 80. (Associated Press file photo/2009)

Mary Tyler Moore at the 53rd Academy Awards in Los Angeles. Moore died Wednesday, Jan. 25, at age 80. (Associated Press file photo/1981)

Mary Tyler Moore accepted the Life Achievement award at the Screen Actors Guild Awards in 2012. (Associated Press file photo/2012)

Mary Tyler Moore at the 26th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards ceremony in 2015. Moore died Wednesday, Jan. 25, at age 80. (Associated Press file photo/2015)

Mary Tyler Moore and her husband, Grant Tinker, at the Emmy Awards in 1966. (Associated Press file photo/1966)

Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, co-stars of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” backstage at the Palladium with their Emmys for best actor and actress in a series at the Television Academy’s 16th annual awards show in 1964. (Associated Press file photo/1964)

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By Frazier Moore (AP Television Writer)

NEW YORK — Mary Tyler Moore, the star of TV’s beloved “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” whose comic realism helped revolutionize the depiction of women on the small screen, died Wednesday.

Moore died with her husband and friends nearby, her publicist, Mara Buxbaum, said. She was 80.

Moore gained fame in the 1960s as the frazzled wife Laura Petrie on “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” In the 1970s, she created one of TV’s first career-woman sitcom heroines in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

She won seven Emmy awards over the years and was nominated for an Oscar for her 1980 portrayal of an affluent mother whose son is accidentally killed in “Ordinary People.”

She had battled Type 1 diabetes for many years. In 2011, she underwent surgery to remove a benign tumor on the lining of her brain.

Moore’s first major TV role was on the classic sitcom “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” in which she played the young homemaker wife of Van Dyke’s character, comedy writer Rob Petrie, from 1961 to 1966.

But it was as Mary Richards, the plucky Minneapolis TV news producer on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (1970-77), that Moore truly made her mark.

At a time when women’s liberation was catching on worldwide, her character brought to TV audiences an independent, 1970s career woman.

Mary Richards was comfortable being single in her 30s, and while she dated, she wasn’t desperate to get married. She sparred affectionately with her gruff boss, Lou Grant, played by Ed Asner and addressed always as “Mr. Grant.” And millions agreed with the show’s theme song that she could “turn the world on with her smile.”

The series ran seven seasons and won 29 Emmys, a record that stood for a quarter century until “Frasier” broke it in 2002.

Mary Richards “certainly was never a character that I had to develop when we were doing the show,” Moore said in a 1995 interview with The Associated Press. “Everything I did was by the seat of the pants. I reacted to every written situation the way I would have in real life.”

She likened being linked with that role to “growing up with a mother who is a very famous actress. There are all kinds of wonderful perks that go with it, and then there are little resentments, too.”

“My life is inextricably intertwined with Mary Richards’, and probably always will be,” she said.

“Mary Tyler Moore” was the first in a series of acclaimed shows she produced with her second husband, Grant Tinker, who died in November, through their MTM Enterprises.“The Bob Newhart Show,” “Hill Street Blues,” “St. Elsewhere” and “WKRP in Cincinnati” are among the MTM series that followed.

In 1983, Moore married cardiologist Robert Levine, who survives her. Her marriage to Tinker lasted from 1962 to 1981. Before that, she was married to Dick Meeker from 1955 to 1961. She is preceded in death by her son, Richard.

In 1992, Moore received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A decade later, a life-size bronze statue went on display in Minneapolis, depicting her tossing her trademark tam into the air as she did in the opening credits of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”