Some names appear in celebrity histories with almost no story attached to them. You find a name, a date, maybe a location — and that’s it. Yun Chi Chung is one of those names.
She surfaces in biographical summaries of comedian Redd Foxx, listed as his third wife. Beyond that, confirmed public information about her is thin. This article pulls together what is actually known, separates fact from assumption, and places her story in the right context.
Who Yun Chi Chung Is
Yun Chi Chung is a Korean-born woman who became publicly known through her marriage to Redd Foxx. She is sometimes referred to by the name Joi, though that detail appears only in secondary profiles.
She was not an actress, entertainer, or public figure in her own right. Her name doesn’t appear in film credits, entertainment rosters, or news archives from that era in any notable way. What little exists about her online comes from genealogy listings, fan pages, and short biographical summaries built around Foxx’s fame.
That’s not a criticism — it’s simply the reality. Many people connected to celebrities live entirely private lives. Yun Chi Chung appears to be one of them.
The Marriage to Redd Foxx
Yun Chi Chung married Redd Foxx on December 31, 1976. The wedding took place at the Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas — a New Year’s Eve ceremony at one of the city’s early classic Strip properties.
She is widely identified as his third wife. The marriage eventually ended in divorce, though no widely sourced date for the split appears in available biographical write-ups.
Major biographical overviews of Foxx do not document any children from this marriage. That said, the absence of documentation isn’t the same as a confirmed fact, so it’s worth treating that point carefully rather than stating it as absolute.
No public record of interviews, statements, or appearances by Yun Chi Chung during or after the marriage appears in mainstream sources. She kept a very low profile, and that has remained consistent over the decades since.
Redd Foxx’s Four Marriages in Order
One of the most common reasons people search for Yun Chi Chung is to understand where she fits among Foxx’s marriages. He married four times, and the timeline helps clarify her place in his personal history.
- First wife: Evelyn Killebrew — Foxx’s first marriage, referenced in broader biographical sources, though details are sparse in most popular write-ups.
- Second wife: Betty Jean Harris — a dancer, married around 1956. Their relationship lasted through much of Foxx’s nightclub years before ending in divorce in the mid-1970s.
- Third wife: Yun Chi Chung — married December 31, 1976, in Las Vegas. The marriage later ended in divorce.
- Fourth wife: Ka Ho Cho — also of Korean origin, married to Foxx in 1991, shortly before his death that same year.
It’s worth being clear on one point that causes confusion: Yun Chi Chung and Ka Ho Cho are two different people. They are separate women, married to Foxx at different points in his life. The similarity — both being Korean women Foxx married — sometimes leads people to conflate them, but the names and timelines are distinct.
Foxx seems to have consistently formed relationships outside the typical Hollywood circle. His partners were often dancers, non-celebrities, or people with no particular public profile of their own.
Redd Foxx — A Brief Profile for Context
For anyone arriving at this article through a search for Yun Chi Chung without knowing much about Redd Foxx, here’s a quick picture of who he was.
He was born John Elroy Sanford in 1922 in St. Louis, Missouri. He took the stage name Redd Foxx and built a reputation as one of the most boundary-pushing African American comedians of his generation.
Before television, he was known for explicit “party records” — uncensored comedy albums sold through non-mainstream channels. He released more than 50 of them, earning him the nickname “King of the Party Records.”
His mainstream fame arrived with the sitcom Sanford and Son, which ran from 1972 to 1977. He played Fred G. Sanford, a junk dealer in Los Angeles, and the show became one of the most-watched programs on American television. By 1976 — the year he married Yun Chi Chung — he was at the height of that fame.
He later appeared in The Redd Foxx Show and was working on The Royal Family when he died on October 11, 1991, after suffering a heart attack during rehearsals.
The Social Context of a 1976 Interracial Marriage in Las Vegas
It’s worth pausing on what a marriage like this represented in 1976, without overstating it.
Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court case that struck down laws banning interracial marriage across the United States, had only been decided in 1967 — less than a decade before Foxx and Yun Chi Chung wed. Interracial marriage was legal, but it was still socially uncommon enough to draw attention, particularly in public-facing circles.
An African American television star marrying a Korean-born woman on New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas was, in that context, quietly notable. It wasn’t a political statement as far as any record shows — but it reflected a broader reality of the Las Vegas entertainment world, which drew performers, staff, and visitors from across the globe and created a more culturally mixed environment than most American cities of that era.
The Thunderbird Hotel, where the ceremony took place, was part of that world. It was a showroom venue where comedians like Foxx performed regularly. The Las Vegas Strip in the 1970s was one of the few places in America where cross-cultural connections between entertainers and the people around them happened fairly naturally, away from the stricter social codes of other regions.
None of this tells us anything specific about Yun Chi Chung’s experience. But it gives the marriage a setting and a historical weight that a bare list of facts doesn’t capture.
Why So Little Is Known About Her
This is one of the most common questions readers have, and the honest answer is straightforward: she was a private person who did not seek public attention.
Foxx was the celebrity. Yun Chi Chung did not have an independent public career that would have generated interviews, press coverage, or a biographical record. When the marriage ended, there was no professional reason for her name to stay in circulation.
What remains today are the traces that come with being married to someone famous — a name in genealogy databases, a line in a biographical summary, a footnote in fan-written profiles. That’s genuinely all most sources have to offer, and any article claiming to know more should be read with caution.
For readers who want well-sourced, carefully framed information on public figures and the people connected to them, Briefly Business is a useful resource that takes the same approach — sticking to what’s confirmed rather than filling gaps with guesswork.
Final Thoughts
Yun Chi Chung is a name attached to a real chapter of Redd Foxx’s life. She married him at the peak of his fame, in a city that suited his personality, on the last night of 1976. Beyond that, the public record is quiet.
That quietness is itself meaningful. Not every person connected to a celebrity wants or courts attention. The fact that so little is known about Yun Chi Chung likely reflects her own choices as much as any gap in the historical record.
What we can say with confidence: she was Redd Foxx’s third wife, the marriage took place in Las Vegas on December 31, 1976, and she is a separate person from Ka Ho Cho, his fourth wife. Everything else, for now, belongs to her private life — and that’s worth respecting.
Read Also:
