Vivian Gillies, wife of LI Journalism Hall of Famer Drew Scott, dies at 78

Vivian Gillies, wife of Long Island Journalism Hall of Famer Drew Scott, died early Friday morning at Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead of complications of a sudden attack of colitis. She was 78.

"She was always by my side. To know her was to love her," said Scott, of Westhampton. "She could make instant friends and she could talk to anybody."

He added: "She was an integral part of my career. She would always give me story suggestions and sometimes made calls, and she was always encouraging me to move on and to reach out to better things."

"He was her everything," said Noreen Castellano, of Shirley, Gillies' friend since the 1980s. "They understood each other sometimes with just a look — like, ‘I'm going to get you for saying that!’ or ‘I love you.’ "

The couple had four children together, and they shared heartaches including Gillies’ breast cancer in 1993, necessitating a mastectomy, and the death of granddaughter Hallie Rae Ulrich from a drug overdose in 2017.

"Vivian was kind, generous and a very loving person who made everyone feel like family instantly," remembered Lynette Taboada, of Westhampton, who called Gillies "a second mom — I grew up with her daughters. It didn't matter who you were, you were welcome. She never turned anybody away — you could show up anytime, day or night. If it was a family function and somebody said, ‘Can I bring my friend’ that nobody knew, she said sure. Everybody felt welcome around her. And with her."

Especially at Sunday dinner, a weekly tradition of pasta and homemade sauce. "She would have as many people in the family as she could every Sunday," Scott said.

"Yeah," Taboada added wistfully. "Sunday pasta dinner. Everybody was welcome. If you wanted to just pop by, you could."

Born Vivian Marturano in Brooklyn on April 6, 1947, she was one of two children of NYPD officer and World War II Army veteran Ross Philip Marturano and Sally Mary Mangiamele Marturano. After graduation from the now-defunct Andrew Jackson High School in Cambria Heights, Queens, in 1964, she began work as a secretary with the pharmaceutical company Pfizer in Manhattan.

Then in 1969, "We met on an elevator in Brooklyn Heights," Scott said. Sometime afterward, "We got engaged on the Staten Island Ferry." They married in October 1970 — she took her surname from his birth name, Stuart Gillies, before he eventually adopted his on-air name.

"My parents gave us tickets to go to Bermuda for a honeymoon," Scott said. Knowing of his interest in broadcasting, "she said, ‘Let’s go tour the TV and radio station,’ " ZBM. "She said, ‘Do you have any openings?’ And the program director said, ‘As a matter of fact, a guy quit just the day before.’ "

That December at the station, Scott began his long, distinguished career.

The couple in 1972 moved to Queens as Scott began work at WGBB/1240 AM in Freeport. Two years later, they bought a home in Central Islip. Scott anchored for WOR/9 and WPIX/11 in Manhattan through 1980, when the family moved to Fredericksburg, Virginia, for his job as a Washington, D.C., correspondent for Tribune Broadcasting.

After four years, they returned to New York for Gillies to be close to her widowed mother, buying a house in Manorville. As Scott went on to WLIG/55 (now WLNY) and News 12, Gillies worked as secretary in a doctor’s office and raised a family. They moved to Westhampton in 2000.

Scott also did work for NewsdayTV from 2020 to 2024.

"I remember growing up," Taboada said, "when somebody had a problem or an argument, she would say in a nice way, ‘Ah, what's it going to matter 500 years from now?’ It was something we would laugh about."

In addition to her husband, she is survived by daughters Sally Gillies, of Westhampton, Sara Garber, of Williston, Vermont, and Sandi Gillies, of Sag Harbor; son Scott Gillies, of Brentwood, California; five grandchildren; one great-grandchild; and a brother, Ross Marturano Jr., of Kennewick, Washington.

Visitation and a memorial prayer service, both as yet unscheduled, will be next week at Werner & Rothwell Funeral Home in Westhampton Beach. Gillies will be buried in a family plot at Northport Rural Cemetery.