ST. LOUIS — This week we honor St. Louis royalty, Becky Rothman, known as "Becky The Queen of Carpet," who died over the weekend after a long fight with kidney disease.
She was always destined to be a star according to her name, Rebecca Starr Rothman was a shining light to her family.
“I know that she loved me very much and it was obviously reciprocated,” her daughter Rachel Reynolds said.
To the rest of St. Louis, she was TV royalty.
Becky left an unforgettable mark on St. Louis with decades of comical commercials for her family flooring store.
“You can't forget a flying carpet with a queen flying around the St. Louis Arch,” her nephew Marc Rothman said.
She even got her daughter, Rachel Reynolds, to join her for one commercial when she was only 3 or 4 years old. She wore a bright pink dress to match her mom’s bright green.
“We have an outtake video, and I did not want to do it. I was just saying, I prefer to be behind the camera. So I used to go to all of her commercial shoots, but that was the only time she convinced me to actually participate in a commercial,” Reynolds said.
When Queen Becky wasn’t running the family business on her magic carpet, she was spending time with her family and her furry children, her Dobermans.
“She raced, trained and competed in Schutzhund, which is essentially like guard dogs, a lot of the working dogs like Dobermans and German Shepherds especially. She competed in the U.S. and in Europe,” Reynolds said.
The family said in 2012, they closed the stores and that same year she was diagnosed with kidney disease, which she has fought for the last decade.
“I was her primary caregiver for past about a year and a half, and she was wheelchair bound for a lot of that. It was very difficult, but she was always so positive,” Reynolds said.
Rothman said she dedicated herself to the community volunteering and even raising $2,000 for the National Kidney Foundation.
“This year we formed a team and participated in the kidney walk this past March,” Rothman said.
Little did they know it’d be the last time she’d wear her crown before the terrible disease took hold.
“It's just really inspiring that even at the end, even on Sunday before it happened, she was still really fighting and holding on and very inspirational,” Reynolds said.
The Rothman family says there will be a visitation open to the public this Thursday at 9a.m. at Berger Memorial Chapel followed by a private service for the family.
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