‘Days of Our Lives’ Star Robert Kelker-Kelly at 62 — His Hollywood Journey and Lisa Rinna’s Claims Resurface

His years on Days of Our Lives also brought one of the most recognizable professional partnerships of his career: his romance storyline with Lisa Rinna’s Billie Reed. The pair became a popular soap couple and won the Soap Opera Digest Award for Hottest Soap Couple in 1995. At the time, Kelker-Kelly praised Rinna as a talented and relaxed actress, but decades later, her account of their working relationship changed the picture. In her 2026 memoir, You Better Believe I’m Gonna Talk About It, Rinna described Kelker-Kelly as a bully and alleged that he made her time on the show extremely difficult, accusing him of verbally abusive, passive-aggressive and manipulative behavior. Those claims were published long after their soap years, and Kelker-Kelly did not publicly respond before his death. Away from Hollywood, he eventually returned to Missouri, where he embraced life as a father and pilot after years of working punishing television hours. His official cause of death has not been publicly released, leaving fans to remember him primarily through the many characters and decades of performances that made him a familiar face on daytime television.