NAMES IN THE NEWS : Rivers Discusses Late Husband

It has been 2 1/2 years since Joan Rivers’ husband committed suicide, but the comedian says she only recently was able to listen to a taped message he left her.

“It was terrible, terrible because the voice is the voice of someone I loved who had already taken pills and was saying goodby,” she said in an interview to be published in Sunday’s Parade magazine. “That’s all I want to say, but I will never listen to that tape again. Never.”

Her husband of 22 years, Edgar Rosenberg, took an overdose of prescription drugs in August, 1987.

Rivers said getting fired from her syndicated show on the Fox network and the negative publicity she received when she left NBC contributed to her husband’s depression.

“He blamed himself for everything,” Rivers said. “Edgar internalized it. He thought, like everyone else, that my career was over, and he thought he had brought it on.”

But Rivers refused to give up on her 25-year career. She went to England and was a hit; today she’s packing Atlantic City clubs and is host of a daily syndicated daytime talk show.

“Edgar would have loved seeing me come full circle,” she said.