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Ka Ho Cho was married to one of the most famous comedians who ever lived for exactly three months. In July 1991 she wed Redd Foxx, the star of Sanford and Son, at a little chapel in Las Vegas. That October, he collapsed on a television set and died — and she was left a widow at the centre of one of the messiest estates in Hollywood history. It is why, more than three decades later, searches for ka ho cho net worth keep growing: people assume the wife of a comedy king must have inherited a fortune.
She did not. This is the true story behind the search: who Ka Ho Cho is, how she met Foxx when the taxman was taking his house, what really happened to his money, and why the honest answer about ka ho cho net worth is very different from the numbers scattered across the internet.
Table of Contents
Quick Facts
| Name | Ka Ho Cho (also rendered “Kaho Cho” in some sources) |
| Born | Seoul, South Korea (birth year listed as 1959 on bio sites — never officially confirmed) |
| Known for | Fourth and final wife of comedian Redd Foxx |
| Married | July 1991, Little Church of the West, Las Vegas |
| Husband | Redd Foxx (born John Elroy Sanford, 1922–1991) |
| Widowed | October 11, 1991 — after about three months of marriage |
| Net worth | Not publicly disclosed. No verified figure exists; online numbers are unconfirmed estimates |
| Life now | Entirely private; no confirmed public appearances since the 1990s |
Who Is Ka Ho Cho?
Ka Ho Cho is a South Korean woman who became briefly, and unwillingly, famous in 1991 as the fourth wife of Redd Foxx. Before that summer, she lived completely outside public life. She had no acting career, no public profile and no connection to Hollywood beyond the man she married — and after his death, she returned to the privacy she had come from, and has guarded it ever since. It is that sudden fame that first made people ask about ka ho cho net worth.
Almost everything reported about her early life comes from entertainment biography websites rather than primary records, and it should be read with that caution. Those profiles consistently describe her as Seoul-born and say she was working as a dancer in Las Vegas when her path crossed with Foxx’s. Her exact birth date has never been confirmed by any reliable source; the year 1959 is repeated from site to site without documentation. The gaps in her record are one more reason ka ho cho net worth stays unverifiable.
That thin public record matters for everything that follows. Ka Ho Cho never had a public career whose earnings could be tracked, no companies whose value could be estimated, and no financial disclosures of any kind. Any honest discussion of her money has to start there — with a private citizen, not a celebrity with a portfolio. In other words, ka ho cho net worth cannot be estimated the way a star’s can.
Redd Foxx: The Husband Behind the Headlines
To understand her story, you first have to understand his. Redd Foxx was born John Elroy Sanford in St. Louis on December 9, 1922. He built his name on the Chitlin’ Circuit and on a string of raunchy party records that made him the “King of the Party Records,” selling by the millions when such albums were passed hand to hand. He was one of the first Black comics to play to white audiences on the Las Vegas Strip.
Television made him immortal. From 1972 to 1977 he starred as Fred G. Sanford in Sanford and Son, one of the biggest sitcoms of its era, winning a Golden Globe and making his catchphrases — “You big dummy!” and the fake heart attack, hand on chest, calling to his late wife Elizabeth — part of American culture. Richard Pryor called him an inspiration. Jamie Foxx took his stage surname in tribute. Chris Rock grew up sneaking listens to his albums. For the family story of the man who played his on-screen son, Lamont, see our profile of Demond Wilson’s daughter.
But Foxx’s finances never matched his fame. According to People magazine, he once earned $4 million in a single year, yet burned through his fortune on a lavish lifestyle and what he himself called “very bad management.” Expensive divorces, monthly support payments and years of unpaid taxes were quietly hollowing out the legend’s bank accounts long before Ka Ho Cho entered his life. Those missing millions sit at the heart of the ka ho cho net worth puzzle.
How Ka Ho Cho Met Redd Foxx
The couple met in March 1989 at Bally’s Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, where Foxx was performing. The timing could hardly have been worse — or more revealing. That November, the IRS seized Foxx’s Las Vegas home and seven of his cars over unpaid taxes, taking some 300 items in total, reportedly down to the cash in his pockets and the jewellery on his wrist. His tax bill for the mid-1980s alone had grown to nearly a million dollars with penalties and interest. The seizure was an early warning of what ka ho cho net worth would really mean: debts, not assets.
Most people drift away from a man in that kind of trouble. Cho stayed. Foxx noticed, and he said so publicly. When the couple married, he told Jet magazine that he chose her precisely because she had stood by him through his IRS ordeal: “She saw me with a nickel. And hopefully, she will see me with a dollar. I’ll give her seventy-five cents of it.”
It is a wonderful quote, and a poignant one. It tells you that by 1991, Redd Foxx understood exactly what he had to offer a wife — nickels, not millions — and that what he valued in Ka Ho Cho was loyalty during the leanest chapter of his life. Their relationship was built in the shadow of the taxman, and it would end in that shadow too. And so the ka ho cho net worth story begins with loyalty, not luxury.
A Three-Month Marriage
Foxx had sworn off marriage after three divorces. His first wife was Evelyn Killebrew (1948–1951); his second, Betty Jean Harris (1956–1975), a showgirl whose daughter Debraca he adopted; his third, Joi Yun Chi Chung (1976–1981), ended with a $300,000 settlement. “I’ve been married three times and I’m out,” he once told Jet. Then he met Cho, and changed his mind. The marriage he entered would define the ka ho cho net worth question forever.
They married in July 1991 at the Little Church of the West, the little wooden chapel that is one of Las Vegas’s most famous wedding venues, with a reception afterwards at the Hacienda Hotel. He was 68. She was, by the commonly reported figures, in her early thirties — an age gap the tabloids noted, though everyone who covered the wedding also noted how devoted the couple appeared.
The marriage lasted about three months — by one count, 91 days. There were no children; Foxx’s only child remained Debraca, his adopted daughter from his second marriage. What the newlyweds could not have known, as they posed for photographs that summer, was how little time they had, or how completely the ending would swallow the beginning. That short clock shaped everything about ka ho cho net worth afterwards.
October 11, 1991: The Day Redd Foxx Died
That autumn, Foxx was attempting a comeback. Eddie Murphy had built a new CBS sitcom for him, The Royal Family, co-starring Della Reese, and it was supposed to restore both his career and his finances. On October 11, 1991, during a break in rehearsals at Paramount Studios, Foxx suffered a heart attack on the set and collapsed.
The detail that has passed into Hollywood legend is the terrible irony of the first few seconds. Foxx fell — and nobody rushed to him, because falling was what Fred Sanford did. His character’s fake heart attacks, complete with pratfalls, had been a running gag for decades. Reese has recalled that when she reached him, he whispered “get my wife” — asking, in his final conscious moments, for Ka Ho Cho. He was taken to Queen of Angels Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center and pronounced dead a few hours later, aged 68.
For Cho, three months of marriage ended in a single afternoon. She was a widow at the very moment the world’s cameras turned toward her, and the private woman who had married a legend now had to bury him — a burial, it is worth noting, that was paid for by his friend Eddie Murphy, because the great Redd Foxx’s estate could not cover it. A funeral paid for by a friend says more about ka ho cho net worth than any estimate.
The Estate Battle: Debt, the IRS and a Family Dispute
What Foxx left behind was not a fortune but a crater. It has been reported that at his death he owed the IRS more than $3.6 million in back taxes. His home and cars had already been seized once, in 1989. He died without a will, which meant the remains of his estate passed to his sole heir: Debraca Denise, the daughter he had adopted during his second marriage. That debt load is the single biggest fact in any ka ho cho net worth discussion.
That arrangement set widow and stepdaughter on a collision course. Entertainment biographies of Cho report that a legal dispute followed over control of the estate and the handling of what little money remained, with Cho accusing Debraca of mismanaging funds that were meant to settle Foxx’s debts. The quarrel dragged on for years, and by those same accounts Cho ultimately received only a small portion of the estate. That small portion is the documented core of ka ho cho net worth.
This is the financial fact at the centre of her story, and it is why every discussion of ka ho cho net worth has to begin with subtraction rather than addition. The widow of a man who once earned $4 million in a year inherited, in practice, lawyers, creditors and a claim on an estate that was underwater. Whatever money she has today, she did not inherit a comedy fortune — because by 1991, there was no fortune left to inherit.
Ka Ho Cho Net Worth: What the Numbers Online Really Mean
So what is the actual figure? Start with the only honest answer: Ka Ho Cho net worth has never been publicly disclosed, verified or documented by any reliable source. She has never given a financial interview, appeared on any rich list, or had assets reported by a reputable outlet. There is no confirmed number — full stop.
That has not stopped the internet from inventing several. Entertainment bio sites that cover her typically estimate her worth at around $400,000, reasoning that she received a small share of what remained of Foxx’s estate. At least one other site puts her at $3.5 million — a number that appears to be borrowed, consciously or not, from the widely reported size of Foxx’s tax debt, which is a very different thing from a widow’s bank balance. Neither figure comes with any evidence. Both numbers tell you nothing reliable about ka ho cho net worth.
And then there is the strangest corner of all: at least one content-farm page claims “Ka Ho Cho” is a male Hollywood actor and businessman worth $500 million, with blockbuster films, endorsements and music deals. None of that person exists. It is a fabricated biography attached to a real woman’s name, and a perfect example of why net-worth pages for obscure figures should never be read at face value.
How do these numbers get made? Typically, a website needs a figure for its template, so it copies a rival’s guess, rounds it, or simply invents one — and then a dozen other sites copy that. For a public company executive or a star with reported contracts, estimates can at least be anchored to something. For a private citizen whose one brush with fame was a three-month marriage in 1991, there is no anchor at all. Without an anchor, every ka ho cho net worth figure is fiction.
Strip away the invented figures and ka ho cho net worth becomes a simpler and sadder calculation. She married a man whose estate was millions in debt. She reportedly received little from it. She has lived privately for over thirty years, with no public business ventures or celebrity income. A modest, ordinary net worth — the kind any working person might accumulate — is the only plausible picture, and anyone who gives you a precise number is guessing.
Where Is Ka Ho Cho Now?
The short answer is that nobody outside her own circle knows, and that is clearly by her design. After the estate disputes faded from the entertainment press in the 1990s, Ka Ho Cho disappeared from public view almost completely. She has given no known interviews, written no memoir, and made no attempt to trade on her three months as Mrs. Redd Foxx — a restraint almost unheard of in celebrity-widow culture. Her silence also keeps ka ho cho net worth unknowable to this day.
Reports about her later life are thin and unverified. Bio sites generally say she never remarried and has no children of her own. Some profiles claim she eventually settled back in South Korea; others suggest she remained in the United States. Neither claim is backed by solid reporting, and this article will not pretend otherwise. If she is alive and well in her sixties, living quietly somewhere, she has achieved exactly the anonymity she appears to have wanted.
There is something worth respecting in that. The mythology of Redd Foxx is full of noise — the records, the lawsuits, the seizures, the catchphrases. The woman who shared his final ninety-one days chose silence instead. Whatever else is uncertain about her life, that choice looks deliberate, consistent and, after everything she was put through in 1991, entirely earned.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Ka Ho Cho?
Ka Ho Cho is a Seoul-born woman who was the fourth and final wife of American comedian Redd Foxx, star of Sanford and Son. They married in Las Vegas in July 1991, and he died three months later, in October 1991. She has lived privately ever since. That privacy is exactly why ka ho cho net worth remains unknown.
What is Ka Ho Cho’s net worth?
There is no verified figure for ka ho cho net worth. Some bio sites estimate around $400,000, while others claim up to $3.5 million, but none of these numbers is supported by evidence. She never publicly disclosed her finances, and Foxx’s estate was deep in debt when he died.
How long were Ka Ho Cho and Redd Foxx married?
About three months. They wed in July 1991 at the Little Church of the West in Las Vegas, and Foxx died of a heart attack on October 11, 1991 — roughly 91 days later.
Did Ka Ho Cho inherit Redd Foxx’s fortune?
No. Foxx died owing a reported $3.6 million in taxes and left no will. His adopted daughter Debraca was his sole heir, and after a reported legal dispute, Cho is said to have received only a small portion of what remained of the estate.
How did Redd Foxx die?
He suffered a heart attack on October 11, 1991, while rehearsing his sitcom The Royal Family at Paramount Studios. Castmates initially thought he was performing one of Fred Sanford’s famous fake heart attacks. He died later that day, aged 68.
Is Ka Ho Cho still alive, and did she remarry?
She is generally reported to be alive and living privately, though there is no recent verified information about her whereabouts. Bio profiles say she never remarried and has no children, but those details, like much of her later life, remain unconfirmed.
Conclusion
The real answer to the ka ho cho net worth question is the one the guesswork sites bury: nobody knows, and the version built on evidence suggests a modest life rather than a hidden fortune. Ka Ho Cho married Redd Foxx when he had a nickel, stood by him while the IRS took his house, and lost him ninety-one days after the wedding — inheriting debts, disputes and headlines instead of millions. Her fortune, if the word even applies, was never money. It was the privacy she reclaimed afterwards, and has kept for more than thirty years.
