For nearly four decades, Mrs. Colby lived the life of a CIA wife, performing what another
agency spouse once described as “the traditional partnership role of ‘two employees for the price of one.’ ”
From 1945 until their divorce in 1984, she was the wife of William E. Colby — the spy and later spymaster who, as CIA director from 1973 to 1976, revealed the assassination attempts and other clandestine activities known as the agency’s “family jewels.”
Mrs. Colby, 94, died July 16 in Washington. The apparent cause was a heart attack, said her son Paul Colby. William Colby died in 1996 in an apparent accidental drowning in the Wicomico River in Maryland.