Toukie Smith, a top runway model of the 1970s and a cast member of the NBC sitcom “227,” has died at 74. She died Wednesday in a New York hospital after what her family called a long, courageous battle with multiple sclerosis, her twin children, Airyn and Julian, announced.
Born Doris Smith in Philadelphia, she began modeling in 1972 and became a fixture on fashion’s biggest stages. She worked for Givenchy, Thierry Mugler, Issey Miyake and Patrick Kelly, and sat for photographers Jean-Paul Goude and Guy Bourdin, according to The Hollywood Reporter’s obituary. Bloomingdale’s named her its Model of the Year in 1978. She was also the muse of her brother, designer Willi Smith, whose WilliWear label gave her a steady runway presence. He died in 1987 at 39 of complications from AIDS.
Smith moved into acting in the late 1980s. She played Eva Rawley on “227,” the sitcom starring Marla Gibbs, during the 1989-90 season. She also appeared in “Miami Vice” and in films that included “Joe’s Apartment,” “The Preacher’s Wife” and “Goosed.” She later opened Toukie’s, a restaurant in New York’s West Village.
Her relationship with Robert De Niro lasted from 1988 to 1996. The couple had twins, Julian and Airyn, born in 1995 through a surrogate after in vitro fertilization. She raised them largely out of the public eye. De Niro, 83, has not yet commented on her death, and Airyn and Julian asked for privacy in their announcement.
Smith’s family has been in the news recently. Airyn came out as a transgender woman in April 2025 in an interview with Them, crediting Black women in her life, including her mother, with shaping her path. De Niro responded in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter that he loved and supported her as his daughter.
Memorial plans have not been announced. Her family has not detailed when she received her diagnosis, and no public record says how long she lived with the illness. Smith’s career bridged two worlds that rarely overlapped in the 1970s and 1980s: the Black models who broke into couture houses and the television actresses who built audiences in network sitcoms. Colleagues in fashion remember the circle around Willi Smith as among the most creative in downtown New York.
