TV star and celebrity host Richard Zachariah has died aged 80, just four months after the  death of his former fashion icon lover and Australia’s first supermodel Maggie Tabberer.

Zachariah and Tabberer, who died in December at the age of 87, were Sydney‘s most stylish celebrity power couple in the 1980s and 1990s and co-presented ABC’s lifestyle television series, The Home Show.

The program faced criticism for being elitist, but was a ratings hit decades before the boom in TV real estate and interior design programs like The Block and Grand Designs Australia.

Zachariah said of the show’s success that although ‘some people said we were showing houses that Australians couldn’t afford … we got more letters from viewers saying, “I live in a fibro house and I’ll never be able to live in the houses we see on the program, but I want to dream so don’t dare take them off”.’

The TV series ended with the close of their ten-year relationship, with Zachariah later observing that people crossed the street to avoid him after reading about his part in their split because ‘breaking up with Maggie was like breaking up with the Queen Mother‘.

Zachariah moved on from the celebrity bubble of Sydney’s glitterati with partner Sarah and a quieter life in South Australia.

A journalist and broadcaster as well as television host and well-known media identity, Zachariah was also a lifelong racing fanatic.

He was the author of several books including Zachariah, about his ten controversial years with Maggie and the reality of life inside the celebrity world, and The Vanished Land, about the disappearing dynasties of Victoria’s western pastoral district.

In more recent years Zachariah and his partner Sarah lived on a vineyard and horse breeding property in the Adelaide Hills

TV host Richard Zachariah had a ten-year relationship with fashion icon Maggie Tabberer, who died in December aged 87

Zachariah’s work took him around the world with the journalist living in London, Sydney and Melbourne.

He previous stints included working as a newsreader on Seven Nightly News and a presenter on the daytime program 11am during the 1980s.

In more recent years, he and Sarah lived on a vineyard and horse breeding property in the Adelaide Hills.

Family and friends are invited to what will be a quieter affair than last December’s public memorial for Maggie Tabberer which was attended by a who’s who of Australia’s glamorous elite.

Stars from the arts and media gathered at Randwick’s Ritz cinema to farewell Maggie, including TV presenter Deborah Hutton, journalist Mike Munro, singer Marcia Hines, as well as retired politician Bronwyn Bishop.

Zachariah’s funeral will be held at the Eastern Park Chapel in Warrnambool, Victoria on Wednesday, April 23 at 2pm, followed by an interment at Ellerslie Cemetery.