John Ritter's widow Amy Yasbeck says she still talks to the late actor 'every day'... 23 years after his shock death

John Ritter's wife Amy Yasbeck has revealed she continues to talk to the late actor, over 20 years after he died.

The 64-year-old actress, who was spotted on a rare outing in July, told Page Six last week, 'I still talk to John. I check in all the time. I talk to him every day.'

She later clarified to People with lightheartedness, 'I didn’t say that he [talks] back. I don’t want people to get the wrong idea.'

Yasbeck elaborated, 'When somebody passes away – my dad passed away when I was 19 – and when they’re in your heart, you check in with them. You knock on that door when you need.'

Ritter, who died of an aortic dissection at age 54 in 2003, and Yasbeck met while filming the 1990 comedy Problem Child, and dated throughout the decade.

The couple wed in 1999, the year after they welcomed daughter Stella.

Elsewhere in her conversation with People at Monday evening's Three's Company 50th Anniversary, called An Evening From the Heart, Yasbeck remembered something her husband used to repeat.

'John used to say all the time when stuff would happen, "Can I get a witness?" Sometimes when you’re alone, and something crazy happens, or a memory comes up, you want a witness. So that person that you’ve lost stands beside you,' she said.

The Hollywood veteran founded the John Ritter Foundation for Aortic Health weeks after Ritter died.

Aortic dissection is a medical emergency where a tear forms in the body's main artery, 'allowing blood to rush between the layers of the artery wall and force them apart,' per MayoClinic.

'I guarantee you, there are people here who don’t even realize they’re at risk [of] aortic dissection or that maybe somebody in their family had died from it because it’s highly genetic,' Yasbeck noted.

Discussing hosting events for the foundation, she added, 'After we’re onstage, people will come up to find me, to find the doctors who are here, and say, "Am I at risk?" Every time. 

'[If] one person finds out their risk, an entire family can be saved from the heartache that we went through.'

Yasbeck and Ritter's daughter Stella, 27, has become a transgender man who goes by Noah.

Stella was only five years old and had just begun kindergarten when her dad collapsed on the set of his sitcom 8 Simple Rules.

Ritter was rushed to Burbank, California's Providence St. Joseph Hospital.

Before declaring his death the result of an aortic dissection, doctors initially thought he had suffered a heart attack.

While discussing Ritter's death, Yasbeck said that 'you can never imagine, until it happens to you, what it’s like to witness your child’s suffering,' via Today.

'As much pain as I was in, trying to wrap my head and heart around my own loss, nothing will ever compare with the absolute despair of experiencing this tragedy through my daughter’s eyes,' she explained.

In addition to Noah, Yasbeck is stepmom to Ritter's children with ex-wife Nancy Morgan – Jason (born in 1980), Carly (born in 1982), and Tyler (born in 1985).

In the wake of her loss, Yasbeck took a step back from her career to focus on family, but in the 2010s she appeared as a guest star on shows including Modern Family, Pretty Little Liars and Bones.

She was on an episode of The Bold and the Beautiful in 2025, and recently finished filming a sports movie called The Big Game, directed by Stephen Musumeci.