Born Kay Piper, American actress Kathryn Hays died on March 25, 2022. From 1972 until 2010, she portrayed Kim Hughes on the CBS soap opera As the World Turns.
Hays was born Kay Piper on July 26, 1934, in Princeton, Illinois, the only child of Roger and Daisy (Hays) Piper. Her parents split soon after Hays was born, so she was raised by her mother, a banker and bookkeeper, and her stepfather, a salesman by the name of Arnold Gottlieb.
She grew up in Joliet. While going to school at Northwestern University, she worked as a model. In 1962, she adopted the maiden name of her mother as her last name and changed her name to Kathryn Hays.
In 1957, Hays married Sidney Steinberg, with whom she had a daughter named Sherri. Actor Glenn Ford and Hays wed in 1966; they divorced in 1969. Wolfgang Lieschke, her third husband, worked in the advertising business.
TV Work
Hays frequently made appearances on episodic TV at the beginning of her career. Hays said on such performances in an interview with the website We Love Soaps in 2010 “A career launch at the time was ideal.
It was a time when female guest stars on primetime programs were nearly universally seen. The star runner would be a male. It would be a really rich part to play the major plot.”
