Tammy Faye, RIP

Cancer took everything. Except her spirit. And her eye makeup.

Tammy Faye Messner, the former televangelist whose fall from grace in the 1980s only served as setup for a remarkable resurgence as a gay icon and reality-TV star in the 2000s, died Friday, one day after nakedly sharing her battle with cancer in a prime-time interview.

Messner, known during her PTL Club days as Tammy Faye Bakker and later simply as Tammy Faye, was 65.

On Thursday, CNN's Larry King Live aired a pretaped interview with an emaciated, 65-pound Messner, who complained of constant pain and an inability to keep down food. She was unrecognizable but for the darkly made up eyes that were her calling card and the punchline for countless stand-up routines. And yet, raspy voice or no, the frail woman fielding questions from King still sounded like vintage Tammy Faye.

"I'm doing pretty good considering the circumstances, Larry," Messner offered. "All I eat is chicken soup and rice pudding, but I'm looking forward to the day when I can bite into that hamburger and fries."

King said the interview was taped Wednesday. Messner's death, at her home in Kansas City, Missouri, was first reported Saturday.

Diagnosed with colon cancer in the 1990s, the disease returned in the form of inoperable lung cancer about three years ago. Ever in the mood to share, Messner made the announcement of her diagnosis on a 2004 Larry King Live.

She and her mascara first came to the attention of channel surfers on the PTL Club, the flagship for the once mighty ministry run by first husband Jim Bakker. The couple's TV roots ran back to the early 1960s and a local show on which Tammy Faye performed with puppets. Jim and Tammy Faye later hooked up with Pat Robertson, with the pair, according to Total Television, hosting the original version of Robertson's long-running The 700 Club.

In the 1970s, Jim and Tammy Faye struck out on their own, and struck it big on TV with The PTL Club. The show's initials stood for "Praise the Lord" or, alternately, "People That Love." In 1987, the initials stood for all that was wrong with televangelism, namely scandals of the sex and money kind. Jim Bakker's transgression with former church secretary Jessica Hahn didn't just launch a Playboy career (for her), it launched a prison sentence (for him, for pulling a Producers-like scam regarding living units at his ministry's Heritage USA complex) and ended the PTL Club and, ostensibly, Tammy Faye's career in the spotlight.

But Tammy Faye proved resilient, especially after the 2000 documentary The Eyes of Tammy Faye celebrated her life, her career and, for a televangelist, her surprising embrace of gays and issues such as AIDS.

"When I went—[when] we lost everything—it was the gay people that came to my rescue, and I will always love them for that," Messner said on last week's Larry King Live.

Messner—she divorced Bakker in 1992 and married church developer Roe Messner in 1993—went on to appear on everything from The Anna Nicole Show to Hollywood Squares. In 2003, she roomed with the likes of porn star Ron Jeremy on The Surreal Life.

"God rest her soul, and goodbye to a dear friend!" Jeremy wrote on his MySpace blog. "A sad day....She will be missed!"

Born March 7, 1942, in Minnesota, Messner was remembered over the weekend by her former husband, the former and once again TV preacher.

"My heart aches for my two children, Jamie Charles and Tammy Sue, who loved their mother dearly," Jim Bakker said in a statement on his Website. "They both told me their mom was so full of life it is hard to believe she is gone."

On Larry King, Messner didn't flinch from the most stark of questions. She said she wanted to be cremated ("I don't want bugs to eat me"), that she felt "a little bit" scared and that she knew exactly where her next stop was.

Said Tammy Faye: "I believe when I leave this earth, because I love the Lord I am going straight to Heaven."