None of this would come out, however, until after his death, when his mistress, Patricia Elizabeth Shannon, sued to get a Montana retreat he promised her. Montana’s Supreme Court ruled last month that the woman is entitled to a trial on her claim.

Kuralt was TV’s rumpled Everyman, a bald, pudgy figure renowned for his sonorous voice and eloquent commentary. He died at 62 of complications from lupus on July 4, 1997.

He met the woman he once said “enriched my life beyond all my dreams” the year after he started his “On the Road” travels. At 33, he already was acclaimed for ferreting out quirky vignettes of Americana. He was also six years into his second marriage, to Suzanna “Petie” Flosom Baird, and had two daughters, both from his first marriage.

Shannon was a divorced, 34-year-old social activist and mother of three. She declined to be interviewed, but court documents tell much of their story.

They met in 1968 in Reno, Nev., where Shannon was leading an effort to build a park in a black neighborhood. Tensions were high following the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. It was a natural Kuralt story.

He did his reporting job, then asked her to dinner, showing up with three dozen long-stemmed roses. They spent the night sitting and talking in the lounge of Reno’s Holiday Motel.

She knew he was married. But with the freedom his travels gave him, Kuralt called her frequently. He visited for two or three days every few weeks. He doted on her, sending gifts and money. He was there for family gatherings, football games, holidays and graduations.

Back in New York, Kuralt’s wife was aware her husband had a fishing place in Montana. But according to court files, she had no inkling of his second family. She has declined all interview requests.

Shannon estimated Kuralt sent $600,000 during the first decade, when their romance was the most intense and they saw each other often.

“Charles always said, his refrain through all of his life, ‘Don’t worry, we’re rich,’ he would say. … He was the breadwinner of the family,” Shannon recalled. “Charles took care of all my needs.”

He provided Shannon and her children with a succession of homes in San Francisco. He spent as much as $400,000 to help her start a small business that eventually failed and paid for her to study landscaping in London.

He paid for her son, J.R., to attend college in Arizona and put Shannon’s elder daughter, Kathleen Baker, through law school.

He bought Shannon a $50,000 cottage in Ireland and purchased 20 acres along the banks of the Big Hole River in Montana. They built a cabin there.

Kuralt bought an additional 90 acres abutting the land and moved an old schoolhouse to a bluff overlooking the river. He spent $180,000 to renovate the school into an office, where he planned to write after his retirement.

The few letters from Kuralt to Shannon that are in the court file contain little romance. However, a handwritten, undated Christmas poem comes close.

Titled “What I Will Give You (A Christmas IOU),” the verse promised: “A string of pearls, a suit and sweater, a Rubens print, a holly tree, and me. A mixing bowl, a sofa and chair, a set of china, a butcher’s knife. My life.”

Kuralt also inscribed Shannon’s copy of his 1995 book “Charles Kuralt’s America” this way: “To Pat, who enriched my life beyond all my dreams. Love, Charles.”

Kuralt sometimes signed notes to Kathleen and J.R. as “Pop.” In a 1995 letter to J.R., Kuralt enclosed money and wrote: “I love you like a son, even though I have been an often-distracted father.”

“Charles was basically a father to me,” Kathleen said at a court hearing. “He gave me some of my first driving lessons. He was there at all the holidays.”

As the relationship wore on, Shannon became increasingly frustrated with Kuralt’s unwillingness to leave his wife.

“I always thought he would get a divorce at some point,” she said in a deposition. “I went through bouts of despair and there were arguments, but we never directly talked about — about his life in New York. I knew it existed. … I did not inquire into it and he didn’t discuss it with me.”

The situation worsened after Kuralt’s “On the Road” assignment ended in 1980, when he became host of CBS’s “Sunday Morning.” With his schedule less flexible, he traveled less and spent more time in New York.

Still, they would usually rendezvous for three weeks each September. They backpacked the mountains. He loved to go fly-fishing in meandering creeks; she would sit on the banks nearby and read.

Three months before he died, Kuralt orchestrated a mock sale to hide the fact he was giving Shannon the original Montana property. He sent her $80,000; she used it to buy the 20 acres and the cabin they had built.

The court fight is over the other land and schoolhouse, valued at $600,000. Kuralt’s will, written in 1994, left the property to his wife.

Shannon contends his last letter to her, two weeks before his death, conveyed their Montana home to her. It read: “I’ll have the lawyer visit the hospital to be sure you inherit the rest of the place in MT, if it comes to that.”

A Leiber and Stoller song may have a variety of melodic guises, but it’s Leiber’s intelligent, powerful writerly voice that distinguishes them. His songs don’t cower; they don’t mope. They shrug off the losers who ain’t never caught a rabbit, and the glitter that rubs right off your feet. They stand bare before you, defying you to accept the abundant riches of the singer’s love, in songs like “I’m a Woman” and “I Who Have Nothing.” In a musical landscape rife with knee-buckling heartbreak, a Leiber and Stoller song somehow always manages to stand supremely tall.

And that same kind of confidence can be heard in the majestic hits of Nick Ashford, who with his wife, Valerie Simpson, penned some of Motown’s most anthemic love songs. They were, most famously, a natural fit for the muscular vocals of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, bringing a world-rockingly spiritual element to romance in songs like “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “You’re All I Need to Get By,” and “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing.”

Maybe it was the strength of their own enduring marriage that inspired them. It certainly inspired their biggest hit as performers, the campy, sweet 1980s hit “Solid.” Maybe it was just a natural songwriting inclination and an ear for hits. Whatever the case, their music didn’t pussyfoot around the terrain of conflicted desire or jilted lovers. An Ashford and Simpson song is a song that knows goddamn well exactly where it stands emotionally, and considers no metaphor too grand to describe it. And when Gaye and Terrell swoon that “No other sound is quite the same as your name; no touch can do half as much,” their music can incite chills. These were the writers who insisted that “no wind, no rain, no winter’s cold can stop me,” who wrote that they didn’t just have love, but “determination.”

With Simpson, Nick Ashford created songs that had the melodic resonance of pop with a bold swagger that would permeate rap and hip-hop. You can hear it all over Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman,” a statement of exhilarating competence. “I ain’t bragging,” she sings, “but I’m the one,” delighting that she’s “got it got it got it.”

Both Leiber and Ashford’s songs retain contemporary relevance. You can hear bits of Leiber and Stoller’s “Stand By Me” in Sean Kingston’s “Beautiful Girls” and Ashford and Simpson’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” in Amy Winehouse’s “Tears Dry on Their Own.” One of the show-stopping moments of the current “American Idol” tour is Jacob Lusk’s soaring “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” It’s a testament to the enduring allure of their messages.

The canon is full of songwriting teams who knew how to conjure up a heavy heart. But few could speak eloquently about strength. And maybe because they so knew much about collaboration, both Leiber and Simpson helped make classics of songs about being unafraid, about standing by one another, standing by you “like a tree.” In music and in life, there’s pain in love. But as both men proved, with a prolific legacy for generations of listeners who can hear a tune on the radio and say, “That’s our song,” there’s stunning power in togetherness.

The Jewish service was led by a rabbi and included prayers in English and Hebrew and reminiscences from Winehouse’s father, Mitch Winehouse. The cab driver and jazz singer, who helped foster his daughter’s love of music, ended his eulogy with the words “Goodnight, my angel, sleep tight. Mummy and Daddy love you ever so much.”

It ended with a rendition of Carole King’s “So Far Away,” one of Winehouse’s favorite songs.

“Mitch was funny, he told some great stories from childhood about how headstrong she was, and clearly the family and friends recognized the stories and laughed along,” said family spokesman Chris Goodman.

“He stressed so many times she was happier now than she had ever been and he spoke about her boyfriend and paid tribute to a lot of people in her life.”

The service was being followed by cremation at London’s Golders Green Crematorium before the family begins Shiva, a Jewish traditional period of mourning.

The soul diva, who had battled alcohol and drug addiction, was found dead Saturday at her London home. She was 27.

An autopsy held Monday failed to determine the cause of the singer’s death. Police are awaiting the results of toxicology tests, which will take two to four weeks.

On Monday the singer’s father, mother and brother visited the house where she died, thanking mourners who had left flowers and cards.

Father Mitch Winehouse said “Amy was about one thing and that was love.”

“Her whole life was devoted to her family and her friends and to you guys as well,” he told fans.

Winehouse released only two albums in her short career — winning five Grammy awards for the second, “Back to Black” — and often made headlines because of drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, destructive relationships and abortive performances.

Since her death, her records have re-entered album charts around the world, and tributes have poured in from fans and fellow musicians.

George Michael called her “the most soulful vocalist this country has ever seen,” and soul singer Adele said she “paved the way for artists like me and made people excited about British music again.”

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Mesfin Fekadu in London contributed to this report.

“They helped shape television in its early days,” Douglas Schwartz said. “Sherwood is an American classic, creating ‘Brady Bunch’ and ‘Gilligan’s Island,’ iconic shows that are still popular today. He continued to produce all the way up into his 90s.”

Sherwood Schwartz was working on a big-screen version of “Gilligan’s Island,” his nephew said. Douglas Schwartz, who created the hit series “Baywatch,” called his uncle a longtime mentor and caring “second father” who helped guide him successfully through show business.

Success was the hallmark of Sherwood Schwartz’s own career. Neither “Gilligan” nor “Brady” pleased the critics, but both managed to reverberate in viewers’ heads through the years as few such series did, lingering in the language and inspiring parodies, spinoffs and countless standup comedy jokes.

Schwartz had given up a career in medical science to write jokes for Bob Hope’s radio show. He went on to write for other radio and TV shows, including “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.”

He dreamed up “Gilligan’s Island” in 1964. It was a Robinson Crusoe story about seven disparate travelers who are marooned on a deserted Pacific Island after their small boat wrecks in a storm. The cast: Alan Hale Jr., as Skipper Jonas Grumby; Bob Denver, as his klutzy assistant Gilligan; Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer, the rich snobs Thurston and Lovey Howell; Tina Louise, the bosomy movie star Ginger Grant; Russell Johnson, egghead science professor Roy Hinkley Jr.; and Dawn Wells, sweet-natured farm girl Mary Ann Summers.

Calling “Gilligan’s Island” a “family,” Tina Louise tweeted that “Sherwood Schwartz brought laughter and comfort to millions of people.” In her Twitter post she added, “He will be in our hearts forever.”

TV critics hooted at “Gilligan’s Island” as gag-ridden corn. Audiences adored its far-out comedy. Schwartz insisted that the show had social meaning along with the laughs: “I knew that by assembling seven different people and forcing them to live together, the show would have great philosophical implications.”

He argued that his sitcoms didn’t rely on cheap laughs. “I think writers have become hypnotized by the number of jokes on the page at the expense of character,” Schwartz said in a 2000 Associated Press interview.

“When you say the name Gilligan, you know who that is. If a show is good, if it’s written well, you should be able to erase the names of the characters saying the lines and still be able to know who said it. If you can’t do that, the show will fail.”

“Gilligan’s Island” lasted on CBS from 1964 to 1967, and it was revived in later seasons with three high-rated TV movies. A children’s cartoon, “The New Adventures of Gilligan,” appeared on ABC from 1974 to 1977, and in 2004, Schwartz had a hand in producing a TBS reality show called “The Real Gilligan’s Island.”

The name of the boat on “Gilligan’s Island” — the S.S. Minnow — was a bit of TV inside humor: It was named for Newton Minow, who as Federal Communications Commission chief in the early 1960s had become famous for proclaiming television “a vast wasteland.”

Minow took the gibe in good humor, saying later that he had a friendly correspondence with Schwartz.

TV writers usually looked upon “The Brady Bunch” as a sugarcoated view of American family life.

The premise: a widow (Florence Henderson) with three daughters marries a widower (Robert Reed) with three sons. (Widowhood was a common plot point in TV series back then, since networks were leery of divorce.) During the 1970s when the nation was rocked by social turmoil, audiences seemed comforted by watching an attractive, well-scrubbed family engaged in trivial pursuits.

Schwartz claimed in 1995 that his creation had social significance because “it dealt with real emotional problems: the difficulty of being the middle girl; a boy being too short when he wants to be taller; going to the prom with zits on your face.”

The series lasted from 1969 to 1974, but it had an amazing afterlife. It was followed by three one-season spinoffs: “The Brady Bunch Hour” (1977), “The Brady Brides” (1981) and “The Bradys” (1990). “The Brady Bunch Movie,” with Shelley Long and Gary Cole as the parents, was a surprise box-office hit in 1995.

It was followed the next year by a less successful “A Very Brady Sequel.”

Sherwood Schwartz was born in 1916 in Passaic, N.J., and grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. His brother, already working for Hope, got him a job when Sherwood was still in college.

“Bob liked my jokes, used them on his show and got big laughs. Then he asked me to join his writing staff,” Schwartz said during an appearance in March 2008, when he got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “I was faced with a major decision — writing comedy or starving to death while I cured those diseases. I made a quick career change.”

Besides his wife, Schwartz’s survivors include sons Donald, Lloyd and Ross Schwartz, and daughter Hope Juber.

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Former Associated Press Writer Bob Thomas and AP Television Writer Lynn Elber contributed to this report.