Eva Kern

Beloved wife of Jerome Kern. Parents George and Eliza Leale. Eva was the eldest of three children -- she had a sister, Ethel and a brother, Albert. At 19 she married the famous and prolific American songwriter, Jerome David Kern, whose most well-known musical (1927) with two later film versions (1936 and 1951) is "Show Boat". Jerome Kern met her whilst on one of his frequent stays in England: her father was the landlord of The Swan Inn at Walton-on-Thames he visited on a boat trip with friends along the River Thames. They married at Saint Mary's Church, Walton, England, on 25 October, 1910. In later years Dorothy Fields, the songwriter, became a close friend and they would often meet for coffee ... but never in the morning as the Kerns liked late nights and late mornings. She was the mother of one daughter, Betty Jane Kern born in 1913. In the years after Jerome Kern's death Eva remarried. Her husband was George Byron, a singer.