Yun Chi Chung, also known as Joi Yun Chi Chung, is best remembered as the third wife of legendary American comedian Redd Foxx. She entered Foxx’s life when Sanford and Son had made him one of television’s most recognizable comedy stars. Yet unlike her famous husband, Yun Chi never tried to turn that connection into a lasting entertainment career.
Yun Chi came to the United States from Korea and was working as a cocktail waitress at the Las Vegas Hilton when she met Foxx. He was about 20 years older than her. Their relationship led to a New Year’s Eve wedding in Las Vegas on December 31, 1976.
Their marriage lasted less than five years. Foxx filed for divorce in 1979, Yun Chi responded with allegations of cruelty, and the marriage officially ended in 1981. The divorce reportedly resulted in a $300,000 settlement for Yun Chi.
Who Was Yun Chi Chung Before She Met Redd Foxx?
This is where Yun Chi’s story becomes difficult to document.
She was born in Korea, but reliable public records do not clearly establish her exact date of birth, hometown, parents, siblings, or education.
Historical accounts say she had only recently arrived from Korea when she was working in Las Vegas.
That makes her life before Foxx very different from his.
Foxx had already spent decades building a career in comedy.
He had performed in nightclubs.
Recorded adult-oriented comedy albums.
Appeared on television.
And eventually become nationally famous through Sanford and Son.
Yun Chi, by comparison, was living a relatively ordinary life outside show business.
What Was Yun Chi Chung’s Real Name?
Historical accounts often identify her as Joi Yun Chi Chung.
Other records shorten the name simply to Yun Chi Chung.
IMDb, for example, lists Redd Foxx’s third spouse as Yun Chi Chung and records their marriage from December 31, 1976, until September 11, 1981.
The name “Joi” appears in longer accounts of Foxx’s personal life, including the history of how the couple met.
Because she did not maintain a major public career, there is little reason to assume every variation found online represents a different person.
In this case, Joi Yun Chi Chung and Yun Chi Chung refer to the same woman.
How Did Yun Chi Chung Meet Redd Foxx?
Yun Chi reportedly met Foxx while working as a cocktail waitress at the Las Vegas Hilton.
She had arrived in the United States from Korea not long before their meeting.
Las Vegas was already an important city in Foxx’s life.
Long before television made him a household name, he had built much of his reputation performing nightclub comedy.
By the 1970s, however, Foxx was no longer simply a nightclub entertainer.
He was a television star.
Meeting him could therefore bring a private person into a completely different world almost overnight.
That is what happened to Yun Chi.
How Much Older Was Redd Foxx Than Yun Chi Chung?
Reliable accounts describe Yun Chi as approximately 20 years younger than Foxx.
Foxx was born on December 9, 1922.
If the reported age difference is accurate, Yun Chi would have been born around the early 1940s.
However, that should not be turned into an exact birth year without stronger evidence.
There are many websites that publish precise birthdays for private celebrity spouses without showing reliable records.
Yun Chi’s exact birth date remains publicly uncertain.
When Did Yun Chi Chung Marry Redd Foxx?
Yun Chi and Redd Foxx married on December 31, 1976.
They chose New Year’s Eve for the wedding.
The ceremony took place at the Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas.
IMDb also records December 31, 1976, as their wedding date.
It was a striking moment in Foxx’s personal life because his previous long marriage had ended only recently.
Yun Chi was becoming his third wife at a time when his professional life was also changing.
Was Redd Foxx Still on Sanford and Son When They Married?
Yes.
Sanford and Son ran from 1972 until 1977.
Foxx played Fred G. Sanford, a Los Angeles junk dealer whose arguments, schemes, fake heart attacks, and famous complaints made him one of television’s best-known characters.
Yun Chi married him near the end of the show’s original run.
That meant she entered his life at almost the peak of his television fame.
Foxx had been successful before Sanford and Son, especially among comedy audiences.
But the sitcom introduced him to millions of Americans who had never heard his nightclub routines or comedy records.
A natural internal-link opportunity would be Redd Foxx’s rise from nightclub comedian to Sanford and Son legend.
Was Yun Chi Chung Redd Foxx’s First Wife?
No.
She was his third wife.
Foxx married four times during his life. His first marriage was to Evelyn Killebrew, followed by a much longer marriage to Betty Jean Harris. After that marriage ended, he married Yun Chi. His fourth and final wife was Kaho Cho.
This order is important because Yun Chi is frequently confused with Foxx’s final wife.
Both women had Korean backgrounds.
Both became connected with Foxx in Las Vegas.
But they were two different people.
Who Was Betty Jean Harris?
Betty Jean Harris was Foxx’s second wife and the woman with whom he shared his longest marriage before Yun Chi entered his life.
She was a dancer and show-business performer.
Foxx married her in 1956.
He also adopted her daughter, Debraca, who took the Foxx surname.
Their marriage lasted until the mid-1970s.
That relationship covered many of Foxx’s important pre-Sanford and Son years and much of his rise to television fame.
After it ended, Foxx’s personal life moved quickly into another chapter.
That chapter involved Yun Chi.
Did Yun Chi Chung and Redd Foxx Have Children?
There is no reliable record of Yun Chi and Foxx having biological children together.
IMDb lists Debraca Foxx as Foxx’s child, but she was actually the biological daughter of his second wife, Betty Jean Harris, whom Foxx adopted.
No child from Foxx’s marriage to Yun Chi appears in the established biographical record.
This distinction matters because online family profiles sometimes incorrectly attach children to celebrity marriages simply because those children appear in a broader family tree.
There is no strong evidence that Yun Chi became a mother with Foxx.
What Was Their Marriage Like?
Much of the private day-to-day relationship between Yun Chi and Foxx remains undocumented.
There are public photographs from the marriage and historical records showing that Yun Chi accompanied him during at least some public appearances.
But their relationship eventually became troubled.
By 1979, only a few years after the wedding, Foxx wanted out of the marriage.
The divorce then became public and contentious.
This is one of the few periods when Yun Chi’s own complaints entered the historical record.
Why Did Redd Foxx Divorce Yun Chi Chung?
Foxx filed for divorce in October 1979.
Yun Chi responded with her own divorce action and accused him of cruelty.
The surviving public record focuses much more heavily on the legal dispute than on the private events that led to it.
For that reason, it would be irresponsible to invent a detailed story about what happened inside their marriage.
The safest conclusion is that the relationship had seriously broken down by 1979.
The legal process then continued for some time before the divorce became final.
When Was Yun Chi Chung’s Divorce Finalized?
IMDb lists the end of their marriage as September 11, 1981.
Other historical summaries simply give 1981 as the divorce year.
So the marriage lasted a little under five years.
The relationship itself had already been in divorce proceedings since Foxx filed in 1979.
For Yun Chi, the divorce effectively marked the end of her regular connection with American celebrity culture.
She largely disappeared from entertainment coverage afterward.
How Much Did Yun Chi Chung Receive in the Divorce?
Historical accounts report that Foxx paid Yun Chi a $300,000 divorce settlement.
That was a substantial amount of money in 1981.
It also became significant in later discussions about Foxx’s financial problems.
Foxx earned enormous amounts of money during successful periods of his career, but his finances became notoriously complicated.
He later faced bankruptcy and serious tax problems.
The settlement with Yun Chi is often mentioned as one of several major financial pressures in his life.
A useful internal-link opportunity would be Redd Foxx’s fortune, IRS problems, bankruptcy, and what happened to his money.
What Did Redd Foxx Say About the Divorce?
Foxx’s frustration became public.
During the divorce proceedings, he told Jet that he had now been married three times and was finished with marriage.
He also complained about losing money through divorce and suggested he would rather his money go to children.
Those comments reflected how bitter he felt at the time.
But history produced an interesting twist.
Despite declaring that he was finished with marriage, Foxx eventually married again.
And his fourth wife was also from Korea.
Is Yun Chi Chung the Same Person as Kaho Cho?
No.
This is probably the most important correction in any biography about Yun Chi Chung.
Yun Chi Chung and Kaho Cho were two completely different women.
Yun Chi married Foxx on December 31, 1976.
Their marriage ended in 1981.
Kaho Cho did not marry Foxx until July 1991, roughly a decade later.
Both women were Korean.
Both were associated with Foxx’s life in Las Vegas.
That similarity has caused some poorly researched online biographies to merge their identities.
They should never be treated as the same person.
Who Was Kaho Cho?
Kaho Cho was Redd Foxx’s fourth and final wife.
She came from Seoul, South Korea, and met Foxx at Bally’s Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas in 1989.
Foxx had spent years insisting that he would never marry again after the painful divorce from Yun Chi.
But Kaho supported him during one of the hardest periods of his life.
By then, Foxx was facing serious problems with the IRS.
He later explained that Kaho stayed beside him during those financial struggles.
They married in July 1991.
Sadly, their marriage lasted only a few months because Foxx died in October.
A natural related article would be Kaho Cho’s brief marriage to Redd Foxx and what happened after his death.
Did Yun Chi Chung Remain in Redd Foxx’s Life?
There is little reliable evidence that Yun Chi maintained a close relationship with Foxx after their divorce.
Their marriage ended badly enough to involve competing divorce claims and a major financial settlement.
Afterward, Yun Chi largely disappeared from public reporting.
Foxx continued working.
He returned to television.
He faced severe financial problems.
He eventually began a relationship with Kaho Cho.
By the time he died in 1991, Yun Chi had not been his wife for about a decade.
What Happened to Redd Foxx After Their Divorce?
Foxx’s life remained eventful.
Professionally, he continued performing and acting after Sanford and Son.
He appeared in the follow-up series Sanford, later starred in The Redd Foxx Show, appeared with Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor in Harlem Nights, and eventually returned to television with The Royal Family.
Financially, however, things became increasingly difficult.
He faced enormous tax debts.
The IRS eventually seized property.
His finances became one of the most famous cautionary stories in entertainment.
Yet Foxx kept working.
Comedy remained central to his life almost until the very end.
How Did Redd Foxx Die?
Redd Foxx died on October 11, 1991, at age 68.
He collapsed while rehearsing on the set of The Royal Family in Los Angeles.
Because his Fred Sanford character had famously faked heart attacks while shouting that he was “coming to join” Elizabeth, people around him initially thought he was joking.
This time, however, the medical emergency was real.
Foxx was taken to a hospital and died.
His death occurred only a few months after he married Kaho Cho.
Yun Chi was already his former wife by then.
Did Yun Chi Chung Attend Redd Foxx’s Funeral?
There is no strong, widely available reporting confirming Yun Chi’s attendance at Foxx’s funeral.
His death and funeral received substantial media coverage, particularly because of his fame and severe financial difficulties.
But reports generally focus on his final wife, Kaho, his adopted daughter Debraca, celebrity friends, and the entertainers who honored him.
It would therefore be inappropriate to claim Yun Chi attended unless a reliable contemporary source establishes it.
Her relationship with Foxx had ended a decade earlier.
What Did Yun Chi Chung Do for a Living?
Before her marriage, Yun Chi was reported to have worked as a cocktail waitress at the Las Vegas Hilton.
There is no reliable evidence that she became an actress, singer, producer, or other entertainment professional after marrying Foxx.
This is another area where online biographies can become misleading.
Being married to an entertainer does not automatically make someone part of the entertainment industry.
Yun Chi appears to have been a private person who briefly entered a very public world because of her relationship.
After the divorce, she largely left that world again.
Did Yun Chi Chung Remarry?
There is no reliable mainstream documentation establishing another marriage after Redd Foxx.
That does not prove she never remarried.
It simply means her later romantic life has not been documented well enough to state it as fact.
A dating database lists only her marriage to Foxx, but such databases are not complete records of a private person’s life.
The responsible answer is therefore that her post-divorce relationship history remains private.
What Is Yun Chi Chung’s Net Worth?
Yun Chi Chung’s current or later personal net worth is not publicly verified.
The one substantial financial figure connected with her is the reported $300,000 divorce settlement from Foxx in 1981.
That does not tell us her later financial position.
We do not have reliable information about her career after the divorce.
We do not know her investments.
We do not know what property she owned.
And we do not know what became of the settlement over the following decades.
Websites giving a modern multimillion-dollar “net worth” for Yun Chi should therefore be treated cautiously.
Is Yun Chi Chung Still Alive in 2026?
This question does not have a firmly documented public answer.
There is no widely reported credible obituary that can clearly be matched to Redd Foxx’s third wife.
At the same time, there is very little recent reporting confirming her present circumstances.
Therefore, it is safer not to declare confidently that Yun Chi is alive or deceased.
Her current status is simply not well documented in reliable public sources.
That uncertainty is understandable.
She has been outside the celebrity spotlight for more than four decades.
Why Did Yun Chi Chung Disappear From Public Life?
There is no interview in which Yun Chi clearly explains why she became so private.
But her public history offers an obvious possibility.
Her fame was connected almost entirely with her marriage.
She was not trying to promote movies.
She did not have albums to sell.
She did not have a television career.
Once the marriage ended, there was little professional reason for her to continue appearing in entertainment media.
The public moved on to Foxx’s career and later relationships.
Yun Chi appears to have returned to private life.
Why Is There So Little Information About Her Today?
Yun Chi lived in a very different celebrity era.
Her marriage happened before social media.
Before Instagram.
Before celebrity spouses could create careers simply by sharing their daily lives online.
When Yun Chi disappeared from newspaper and magazine coverage, there was no digital trail constantly recording her activities.
That has created large gaps in her biography.
Modern websites sometimes fill those gaps with assumptions.
A better biography accepts that some parts of her life remain unknown.
Why Do People Still Search for Yun Chi Chung?
Much of the modern curiosity comes from renewed interest in Redd Foxx.
Sanford and Son remains an important television comedy.
Foxx continues to influence comedians.
Old clips circulate online.
New generations discover his work.
Then they begin searching his personal life.
Four marriages naturally create questions.
And Yun Chi is particularly intriguing because she briefly shared his life at the height of his fame before almost completely disappearing from public view.
Interesting Facts About Yun Chi Chung
Yun Chi came to the United States from Korea and worked as a cocktail waitress at the Las Vegas Hilton when she met Redd Foxx.
She was reportedly around 20 years younger than Foxx.
The couple married on New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1976, at the Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas.
She was Foxx’s third wife.
Foxx filed for divorce in October 1979, and Yun Chi responded with her own divorce action alleging cruelty.
IMDb records the divorce as finalized on September 11, 1981.
Historical accounts report that she received a $300,000 divorce settlement.
There are no reliably documented biological children from their marriage.
Yun Chi Chung and Foxx’s fourth wife, Kaho Cho, were two different Korean women and should not be confused.
Her life after the divorce remains largely private.
Final Thoughts
Yun Chi Chung entered Redd Foxx’s life during an extraordinary period.
Foxx was already famous.
Sanford and Son had turned him into a television icon.
His face and voice were recognizable across America.
Yun Chi, meanwhile, had recently come from Korea and was working as a cocktail waitress in Las Vegas when they met.
Their worlds could hardly have been more different.
Yet they formed a relationship and married on New Year’s Eve in 1976.
For a few years, Yun Chi became part of Foxx’s celebrity life.
Then the marriage broke down.
Foxx filed for divorce.
Yun Chi made allegations of cruelty in her own filing.
And in 1981, the marriage officially ended.
The reported $300,000 settlement became part of the larger story surrounding Foxx’s troubled finances.
But Yun Chi herself did something very different.
She disappeared from fame.
There was no major acting career afterward.
No celebrity memoir.
No reality television comeback.
No decades-long attempt to make money from being Redd Foxx’s ex-wife.
That privacy is exactly why so many questions about her remain unanswered today.
We do not have a reliably confirmed exact birth date.
Her early family history remains obscure.
Her life after divorce is largely undocumented.
Her current status in 2026 is not firmly established by major public reporting.
And there is no reliable evidence supporting many of the personal details repeated by small biography sites.
One thing, however, deserves special emphasis.
Yun Chi Chung was not Kaho Cho.
Yun Chi was Foxx’s third wife, married to him from 1976 until 1981.
Kaho became his fourth wife in July 1991, only months before his death.
Keeping those two women separate is essential to understanding Foxx’s personal history correctly.
Yun Chi’s chapter in that history was relatively short.
But it came during one of the most famous periods of his career.
And more than four decades after their divorce, people still search for the Korean woman who met one of America’s biggest comedians in Las Vegas, married him on New Year’s Eve, and then quietly stepped away from the celebrity world.
For more carefully researched celebrity biographies and family stories, visit Charles Magazine.
FAQs About Yun Chi Chung
Who is Yun Chi Chung?
Yun Chi Chung, also known as Joi Yun Chi Chung, is a Korean-born woman best known as the third wife of comedian Redd Foxx. They were married from 1976 until 1981.
How did Yun Chi Chung meet Redd Foxx?
She reportedly met Foxx while working as a cocktail waitress at the Las Vegas Hilton shortly after arriving in the United States from Korea.
When did Yun Chi Chung marry Redd Foxx?
They married on December 31, 1976, at the Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas.
When did Yun Chi Chung and Redd Foxx divorce?
Foxx filed for divorce in 1979. IMDb lists their divorce as finalized on September 11, 1981.
Did Yun Chi Chung have children with Redd Foxx?
There are no reliably documented biological children from their marriage. Foxx had an adopted daughter, Debraca, through his earlier marriage to Betty Jean Harris.
How much did Yun Chi Chung receive in the divorce?
Historical accounts report a settlement of approximately $300,000.
Is Yun Chi Chung the same person as Kaho Cho?
No. Yun Chi was Foxx’s third wife. Kaho Cho was his fourth and final wife, whom he married in July 1991.
Is Yun Chi Chung still alive?
Her current status is not reliably documented. There is no clearly verified public obituary for Redd Foxx’s third wife, but there is also too little recent information to make a confident claim about her present life.
