Eva Brady was a Ziegfeld Follies dancer who married a Senator and died tragically young
She was born Eva F. Grady in Iowa on June 5, 1898. Her father, Maurice Grady, was a bookkeeper from Canada. Tragically her mother Margaret died in 1908. Then the family moved to Chicago, Illinois. When she was a teenager Eva went to New York City began working as an artists model. She was a voluptuous brunette with dimples on both cheeks. In 1920 she joined the chorus of the Ziegfeld Follies. Eva would spend three seasons dancing with the show. When Florenz Ziegfeld told the dancers to wear less make-up she complained "The boobs who come to see us like us to lay the make-up on thick. If we came out and danced without any powder and rouge we'd look like sweet and simple milkmaids." She also appeared in the Broadway musical Sally.
Eva had to quit show business in 1925 when she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She moved to Asheville, North Carolina to get medical treatment. While living there she fell in love with attorney Robert Rice Reynolds. He was fourteen years older than her and married to his third wife. After he got a divorce the couple were married on February 27, 1931. The following year Robert was elected to be a Senator from North Carolina. Eva accompanied her husband on a tour of Russia in 1933. During the Summer of 1934 her tuberculosis got worse and she was sent to a sanitarium in Charlotte. Sadly she never recovered and died on December 13, 1934 . Eva was only thirty-six years old. She was buried at Riverside Cemetery in Asheville, North Carolina.
