Robert Kelker-Kelly, the actor remembered by millions of daytime television fans as Bo Brady on Days of Our Lives, has died at 62.

The actor died Saturday, Oct. 3, at his home in St. Peters, Missouri.

Police said emergency crews responded after Kelker-Kelly was found unconscious and not breathing.

Paramedics attempted CPR and other advanced lifesaving measures, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Authorities said nothing suspicious was discovered.

Kelker-Kelly had reportedly complained of chest pain shortly before becoming unresponsive.

Emergency dispatch traffic described the incident as a cardiac arrest, but an official cause of death has not yet been publicly released.

For soap fans, the news marked the loss of a familiar face whose career stretched across several of daytime television’s biggest shows.

Kelker-Kelly began his soap career in 1987 as Sam Fowler on Another World.

But his defining role came in 1992.

That was when he was handed one of the most recognizable characters on Days of Our Lives.

Bo Brady.

Peter Reckell had originated the part and turned Bo into one of daytime television’s most popular romantic heroes.

Taking over such a beloved character was an enormous challenge.

Kelker-Kelly did it for three years.

He appeared in more than 580 episodes between 1992 and 1995, working opposite Kristian Alfonso as Hope Brady and Lisa Rinna as Billie Reed.

His version of Bo quickly developed a following of its own.

Kelker-Kelly won the Soap Opera Digest Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in 1994.

The following year, he and Rinna were honored as the magazine’s Hottest Soap Couple.

On screen, they had chemistry.

Off screen, according to Rinna, the relationship was very different.

Earlier in 2026, Rinna published her memoir You Better Believe I’m Gonna Talk About It.

In it, she described Kelker-Kelly as one of the most difficult people she had encountered during her career.

Rinna alleged that he was verbally abusive, passive-aggressive and manipulative while the two worked together on Days of Our Lives.

She said the experience made her time on the show extremely difficult.

The allegations were one-sided.

Kelker-Kelly did not publicly respond before his death.

Rinna also claimed that tensions surrounding his departure from the show became serious enough that NBC arranged security for her and Kristian Alfonso for several weeks.

That account has been widely reported since the memoir’s publication, but it remains Rinna’s description of events rather than an independently adjudicated finding.

The resurfacing of those claims after Kelker-Kelly’s death creates an uncomfortable contrast.

At the height of their Days popularity, Kelker-Kelly publicly praised Rinna.

“She’s a wonderful actress, very relaxed,” he said during their time together.

Years later, Rinna remembered the same period very differently.

That gap between their public image and her later account is now receiving renewed attention as fans look back on Kelker-Kelly’s career.

But his life extended far beyond one co-star or one soap.

Born April 18, 1964, in Wichita, Kansas, Kelker-Kelly did not follow a straightforward path into acting.

He was rebellious as a teenager and had a difficult relationship with school.

Eventually, theater gave him direction.

He performed with stage companies and spent years trying to establish himself professionally.

Success did not come quickly.

Kelker-Kelly later recalled struggling financially while pursuing acting.

At various points he worked as a secretary, slept in his Jeep and stayed on friends’ couches and floors.

Landing Another World changed his life.

From there, he became one of the most recognizable male faces in daytime drama.

After Days of Our Lives, he eventually joined General Hospital as Stavros Cassadine.

The role was very different from Bo Brady.

Stavros was a villain — controlling, dangerous and deeply tied to the Cassadine family’s long-running mythology.

Kelker-Kelly played the character in the early 2000s and returned years later, appearing again in 2013 and 2014.

His final television appearances came in 2014.

By then, he had already begun building an entirely different career.

Aviation.

Kelker-Kelly became a licensed professional pilot and worked in charter aviation.

He flew Learjets from the St. Louis area and also worked as a flight instructor.

For someone who had spent years working grueling soap-opera schedules, the transition offered a radically different lifestyle.

Kelker-Kelly had previously described the demands of daytime television as exhausting.

He said his workdays could stretch to roughly 90 hours a week, with early-morning preparation followed by long days on set.

Eventually, he said, that lifestyle left him eager to step away.

Flying gave him something television rarely did.

Privacy.

Routine.

And distance from Hollywood.

Still, soap fans never completely forgot him.

For many viewers, he remained the man who had taken on the intimidating task of replacing Peter Reckell and somehow survived it.

Bo Brady had already belonged to someone else.

Kelker-Kelly nevertheless made the character his own for three years.

His work alongside Kristian Alfonso and Lisa Rinna became part of one of Days of Our Lives’ most memorable eras.

And his later turn as Stavros Cassadine ensured that another generation of daytime viewers knew his face.

News of his death spread quickly through the soap community.

Tributes focused on a career that moved from Another World to Days of Our Lives to General Hospital, before ending in a life largely removed from television.

His death has also inevitably brought Rinna’s recently published allegations back into the spotlight.

Those allegations should neither be erased nor treated as proven fact.

They are part of the public record.

So is Kelker-Kelly’s decades-long body of work.

The two can exist together.

Robert Kelker-Kelly leaves behind a complicated legacy:

a struggling young actor who became a soap star,

a replacement Bo Brady who won over skeptical fans,

a memorable villain on General Hospital,

a professional pilot who built a second life away from Hollywood,

and a former co-star whose off-camera behavior was sharply criticized decades later by one of television’s best-known personalities.

He was 62.