Days of Our Lives’ Star Robert Kelker-Kelly Quietly Left Hollywood Behind for a Very Unexpected Career

Days of Our Lives and General Hospital actor Robert Kelker-Kelly died at the age of 62 on October 3, according to a recent report from TMZ.

While Kelker-Kelly was best known for playing Bo Brady on Days of Our Lives and Stavros Cassadine on General Hospital, the actor quietly left Hollywood behind for a surprising new career.

After marrying Days actress Miriam Parrish, he briefly stepped back from his full-time acting gigs in the late 1990s to earn a certification in Airframe and Powerplant mechanics, per Soap Central.

In 2014, Kelker-Kelly candidly spoke about his decision to temporarily trade soap stardom for the friendly skies, telling RAD1Radio, “I teach flying, and I fly; I’m a professional charter pilot right now. My dad was a pilot. Growing up, I grew up around airplanes and you know, I was desperate to find something to do.”

He continued, “By the mid-90s…I was burned out and ready to do something else because I couldn’t break out of soaps. I just couldn’t make that leap in doing other things. I had gotten tired. So I was looking around. I was doing a play, and I saw an advertisement for a place that would teach you how to become an aviation mechanic, and I always wanted to know how they work, and I figured if I knew how they worked I wouldn’t feel so intimidated by the process of learning how to fly them.”

Kelker-Kelly went all in on his new career, revealing, “So I chucked the acting industry, and I worked as a line guy at the airport and pumped gas and went to night school, and got my mechanics license and worked that for two years. Around two years, a year and a half. And then got the call to do General Hospital the first time. And that afforded me the money to buy a little teeny tiny airplane that I fixed up. I got into the aviation thing. I figured, you know, I had to have a cool job, right? I couldn’t become a surgeon, so I figured I’d become a pilot instead.”

The actor/pilot played Bo Brady (previously played by Peter Reckell) on Days of Our Lives from 1992 to 1995 and Stavros Cassadine on General Hospital from 2001 to 2003. He later briefly returned to Port Charles, reprising his GH role in 2013 and 2014.