 Hunter Tylo Biography
Baby picture courtesy of Official Fan Club
Hunter Tylo was born Deborah Jo Hunter on Wednesday July 3, 1962 in Fort Worth Texas. The third child of four children, her siblings include a sister, and two brothers. As a child, Hunter was teased by her older brother who referred to her as "chili pepper lips" because of her famous full lips. She became a very shy child. During her childhood years Hunter's best friends were her collection of pets. This included a managerie of animals ranging from chickens, dogs,horses to baby alligators and other reptiles. When she reached pre-adolescent age she shunned the attention of boys and that of make-up , she was more of a tom boy. All her free time she would spend tending to her animals.
Eagerly searching to bring out her child's more feminine side, her mother enrolled her into a nearby charm school. Her mother, Jo Ann, also arranged for her to have her pictures done. At the start of her ten years, she began her modeling career at Jon Robert Powers in Dallas,Texas.Soon a young Hunter was getting some jobs and even more exposure to the industry altogether. It looked like she was well on her way to becoming a well-known model in the Dallas area.
Senior picture, Springtown High Class of '80
However, that would not happen until later in her life. At age 17 her life was changed and her budding career was immediately halted. It was during this time that Hunter found out that she was pregnant with her boyfriend's child. She had recently graduated from the local high school and decided to keep and raise the child.
Her experience of finding out she was to be a mother "seemed like the end of the world" to her and her mother was devasted as well. Hunter had recieved a scholarship to a university and would now have to give it up to raise this child. She also agreed to marry her child's father and on July 18, 1980 she did just that. To support her family she worked as a department store clerk.
Hunter's early marriage ended up being a very unhappy one as well as one in which she was unprepared for.It didn't last very long and by age 20 Hunter had sought and succeded in getting a divorce. As a single mother she now juggled 3 jobs to care for herself and her then two-year-old son, Christopher. She decided to try out acting, and ended up really liking it. She became focused on achieving her goal of being an actress, eventhough it was not her first career choice. She did some acting classes and then began doing local dinner theatre in Dallas. One night the casting agent for "ALL MY CHILDREN" happened to be in town and saw her at a show. Joan d'Incecco immediately saw that the then Deborah had a very unique look. d'Incecco recalled that Hunter was someone that "knew what to do and was very instinctual" at her auditions. She said she also "had a face that the camera just adored". The agent soon hooked her up to come to New York for a test role.
From her early days as a blonde on All My Children
Shortly after screentesting, Hunter got the part of Robin on the soap opera and moved to New York to start her new life there.She says that because she came from such a small rural town in Texas, it took her quite a while to get used to the City's millions of inhabitants. This was her very first soap role. This soap was also where she met her second husband, Michael Tylo.
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He was playing Matt on the soap. At first, the two could not stand eachother. They literally could hardly be in the same room. But after the two had a couple of dates, they really got to know eachother and discovered a mutual, underlying attraction toward one another. Hunter was drawn to Michael's sensibility and Michael taken with her spunk and tenacity. They continued to date for a while until they became engaged and later wed on July 3, 1987. The next year their first child- son Michael Tylo II was born. After he was born, Hunter enrolled at Fordham University in New York to begin her pre-med studies.