Paula Tucker, co-owner of Munday's in Huntington, dies at 77

As the co-owner of Munday's diner in the heart of Huntington village, Paula Tucker presided over a place where everybody knew your name. And that was only one of the many things the Huntington Bay resident excelled at, family and friends recalled.

"I think if she had been born when I was born, she probably would have been a CEO," said Tucker’s daughter Monica Connell, 56, an attorney in Manhattan. When Tucker and family friend Jimmy Spiropoulos were considering buying Munday’s several years ago, "I tried to talk her out of it," Connell said. "I was, like, 'Mom, you're 72. This is your time to slow down.’ She said, ‘I don't want to slow down, Monica. If I slow down, then I'm an old person and I don't want to be an old person.’ " Tucker and Spiropoulos bought the diner in 2019.

Tucker, said longtime friend Judith Willner, also of Huntington Bay, helped make the diner "into the coffee form of 'Cheers,' " the classic sitcom in which a charismatic bar-owner made a home away from home for the eclectic regulars.

Tucker died of congestive heart failure and COPD at Huntington Hospital on Nov. 28 at age 77. Despite her failing health, her daughter said, she worked until the week before she died.

"Whatever she put her mind to, she was determined she would be good at it," said Willner, who was for decades part of an informal, revolving group of up to a half-dozen women nicknamed The Ladies, who met weekly at Tucker’s.

Tucker was an avid gardener and loved to play sports. "Her garden would be beautiful but never overdone, always very natural looking, and it’s not so easy to do that," Willner said. "She was an excellent tennis player, and then she became an excellent golfer even though she didn't take that up until midlife."

Connell added that she taught her children baking, embroidery and sewing.

Paula Frances Kennedy was born in Philadelphia on Feb. 16, 1948, and raised in Collingswood, New Jersey, one of three children of merchant marine James Patrick Kennedy and nurse Anne Josephine Regnery Kennedy.

After graduating from Collingswood High School in 1966, she entered into a short marriage with James Connell, having two daughters with him, the first when she was 19. Following the couple’s divorce in the early 1970s, she married William Albert "Tuck" Tucker in 1974, and the two had a son together. William Tucker's children from his first marriage became like the siblings’ uncles and aunts, Monica Connell said.

The new family moved to Long Island, where William worked in coffee wholesaling, eventually founding Tucker’s Coffee, a distributor to restaurants. When he died suddenly in 2004, Paula took over the business, without any prior business experience.

"She figured it out and made it work," Willner said. "I think she even expanded the company somewhat."

In addition to her daughter Monica, Tucker is survived by her daughter Mary Christina Connell Donovan, of Mattituck; son, Page Tucker, of Huntington; sister, Suzanne Kennedy Grexa, of Haddon Heights, New Jersey; and eight grandchildren. Her brother, James Kennedy, predeceased her.

Visitation and a memorial service were held Dec. 6  at Nolan Funeral Home, in Northport. Tucker was cremated.