Toukie Smith, Model Turned Actress, Dies at 74

A prominent face in 1970s fashion, Smith later became known to television audiences as Eva Rawley on the sitcom 227. She died in New York after a long battle with multiple sclerosis, her children said

Toukie Smith built a career that crossed two worlds of American entertainment, moving from the fashion runways of the 1970s to television roles in Miami Vice and the sitcom 227. She died Wednesday, Nov. 4, at a New York hospital at the age of 74, after a long battle with multiple sclerosis, her twin children, Airyn and Julian, announced. They described her fight with the disease as “long and courageous.”

For television viewers, Smith was best known as Eva Rawley, the artist who moved into the Lexington Place apartment building on 227. She joined the sitcom in 1989, appearing in its final two seasons. Her character eventually took on the management of the building before the series ended in May 1990.

The role came after a successful career in fashion. Born Doris Smith in Philadelphia on Sept. 25, 1952, she was given the nickname Toukie by her grandmother, who took it from a children’s record about a small red fire truck described as full of energy. After attending the Fashion Institute of Technology, Smith entered the modeling industry in 1972 and quickly established herself internationally.

Her work brought her into contact with some of the leading designers of the period, including Hubert de Givenchy, Thierry Mugler, Issey Miyake and Patrick Kelly. She also collaborated with her brother, Willi Smith, the celebrated fashion designer who died in 1987 at 39 from complications related to AIDS. Her image was captured by illustrators Alvaro and Antonio Lopez and photographers Jean-Paul Goude and Guy Bourdin.

Smith appeared in an advertising campaign for Yves Saint Laurent and in international magazines including Vogue, Ebony, Cosmopolitan, Redbook and Seventeen. In 1978, Bloomingdale’s named her Model of the Year. She left the runway in the early 1980s and turned to acting.

Between 1987 and 1988, she appeared in three episodes of the fourth season of Miami Vice. She played Angie, an assistant to pop singer Caitlin Davies, portrayed by Sheena Easton, and the wife of detective Sonny Crockett, played by Don Johnson. Her film credits included Talkin’ Dirty After Dark (1991), I Like It Like That (1994), Joe’s Apartment (1996) and The Preacher’s Wife (1996).

Her work outside fashion and acting also included running a restaurant under her own name on West Houston Street in New York during the 1990s.

Smith’s relationship with Robert De Niro lasted from 1988 to 1996. The couple had twins, Airyn and Julian, conceived through in vitro fertilization and born with the help of a surrogate mother. It was the twins who announced their mother’s death and recalled her determined fight against multiple sclerosis.

(Photo: © AndKronos)