 The pair, who met when the Marvel boss was supposed to take her friend on a date, were married for 69 years. UPDATED: Joan Lee, wife of Marvel Comics icon Stan Lee, died on Thursday in Los Angeles. She was 95. "I can confirm the sad news that Joan Lee passed away this morning quietly and surrounded by her family," a spokesperson for Stan Lee and his family said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “The family ask that you please give them time to grieve and respect their privacy during this difficult time.” 
 
 Joan, a former British hat model, married Stan on Dec. 5, 1947. Joan Lee suffered a stroke earlier in the week and was hospitalized, according to sources. They had two children: J.C. (Joan Celia), who was born in 1950, and Jan, who died three days after her birth in 1953. After a childhood sweetheart wed another woman, Joan Clayton impulsively married an American soldier during World War II and moved to New York, where she was extremely unhappy. After a six-week stay in Reno, Nevada, a judge granted her divorce, and he married her and Stan in a room next door. The couple returned to New York, where Lee worked at Marvel Comics forerunner Timely/Atlas Comics, a job he initially landed because his cousin Martin Goodman owned the company. Comics were a middling enterprise until Lee and Jack Kirby co-created the Fantastic Four in 1961 (followed by the Hulk, Avengers, Iron Man, X-Men and other characters) and turned the company, renamed Marvel Comics, into a pop culture powerhouse. In 1981, the Lees moved from New York City to California so Stan could work on developing Marvel TV and film projects. Joan did voice work on “Fantastic Four” as Miss Forbes and “Spider-Man” as Madame Web in the 1990’s animated Marvel shows. She also had a role in 2016’s “X-Men: Apocalypse.” 
 
 Joan Lee authored a novel, “The Pleasure Palace,” in 1987 about a man’s mission to create the world’s most luxurious ocean liner while simultaneously balancing three romances. On Friday, Stan's Twitter account shared a cartoon of the husband and wife together, swinging off into the sunset. “On behalf of Stan, thanks for the heartfelt condolences,” read the message, accompanied by a comic book drawing of the couple.
– Sad news in the world of comics: Joan Lee, the wife of industry legend Stan Lee, is dead at age 93, reports Variety. She had a stroke last week and never recovered. Lee himself is 94 and had been married to Joan for 69 years. Her death prompted the Hollywood Reporter to recount how Stan Lee met his future wife, then a British hat model living in New York, back in the 1940s. A friend had told him about another hat model, but when he went to ask her to lunch, Joan answered the door. "I took one look at her—and she was the girl I had been drawing all my life," he once recalled. "And then I heard the English accent. And I’m a nut for English accents! She said, 'May I help you?' And I took a look at her, and I think I said something crazy like, 'I love you.' I don’t remember exactly. But anyway, I took her to lunch. I never met Betty, the other girl. I think I proposed to [Joan] at lunch.” The two married Dec. 5, 1947, in Reno, Nevada, roughly an hour after Joan obtained a divorce. The Hollywood Reporter has the full story.