What to Know
On December 14, 2025, Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were found dead in their home. One of their kids, Nick Reiner, 32, was later charged with murder. Rob and Michele’s other children, Jake, 34, and Romy, 27, later released a brief statement saying, “The horrific and devastating loss of our parents, Rob and Michele Reiner, is something that no one should ever experience.”
Of course, what they’re dealing with is devastating and unimaginable. Recognizing that, one of Rob’s longtime friends and collaborators, comedian and actor Billy Crystal, has “stepped up instinctively” to support and protect them, according to a new report.
Rob and Billy were friends for decades.
The two of them first bonded in 1975 when they portrayed friends in CBS sitcom All in the Family. Billy wrote about their special bond in a 2016 column titled Billy Crystal: How Rob Reiner and I Built a Bromance of Four Decades for The Hollywood Reporter. Though they were cast as best friends, they hadn’t met prior to that. But their roles made them realize that they actually would make great friends in real life too.
“It worked really well, and we said, ‘It feels right onstage, why don’t we just continue this in our lives?'” Billy wrote in the column. “We became the closest of friends.”
In the same column, he also described why he was immediately drawn to Rob. “What impressed me the most about Rob was, one, he was so genial, but two, he was so smart,” he said. “It was Rob who was fixing the script with the writers and the producers; it was Rob who was making sense out of what we had to do in the piece. He was so smart and so accurate and funny at the same time.”
They were like family.
According to a recent report from Star Magazine, Billy is doing what he can to support Romy and Jake. An insider told the publication, “He and Rob were more than just collaborators and neighbors, they were brothers, and now he’s stepped up instinctively, like only real family can.”
The insider also described Billy as Rob’s “closest friend,” and said he is really making an effort to protect his kids now that he’s gone. “Billy and his family are making sure that Jake and Romy have a robust support system and all the help they need as Nick makes his way through the criminal justice system,” the insider stated.
In their statement, Romy and Jake said their parents were also their best friends.
“Words cannot even begin to describe the unimaginable pain we are experiencing every moment of the day,” they wrote in their December 17 statement. “The horrific and devastating loss of our parents, Rob and Michele Reiner, is something that no one should ever experience. They weren’t just our parents; they were our best friends. We now ask for respect and privacy, for speculation to be tempered with compassion and humanity, and for our parents to be remembered for the incredible lives they lived and the love they gave.”
