Barbara Smits built in her life: a 29-year career at Cornell Cooperative Extension-New York City, a service award named in her honor, two children, a full education, and a complete personal life that she protected from public attention with the consistency of someone who had made that choice early and never reconsidered it. She was not a celebrity. She was adjacent to one. She had been married to Jimmy Smits during the years before his breakthrough roles made him a household name, but she did not leverage that proximity into anything, and she appeared to have no interest in doing so.
She died on April 16, 2010, at the age of fifty-four. Pneumonia. Her children survived her. The award that bears her name has continued to recognize service in the extension system. And the internet, which requires someone to be famous before it pays attention, only started writing about her afterward.
Barbara Smits: Complete Bio Table
| Category | Detail |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Barbara Smits |
| Date of Birth | November 27, 1955 |
| Date of Death | April 16, 2010 |
| Age at Death | 54 years old |
| Birthplace | United States (specific city not publicly confirmed) |
| Nationality | American |
| Ethnicity | African-American |
| Education | Ithaca College enrolled; graduation status not publicly confirmed |
| Career Organization | Cornell Cooperative Extension-New York City (CCE-NYC) |
| Years at CCE-NYC | 29 years total |
| Career Start at CCE-NYC | 1982 arrived in New York City to work with the 4-H Program |
| Career Progression | 4-H Program worker → Executive Staff Assistant, Environmental Issues Program Area → Assistant to the Executive Director |
| Final Position | Assistant to the Executive Director of CCE-NYC (from 2004) |
| Named Legacy | The Barbara Smits Service Award created by CCE-NYC in her honor |
| Ex-Husband | Jimmy Smits Emmy Award-winning actor (L.A. Law, NYPD Blue, The West Wing) |
| How They Met | Approximately 1971 (after two years of dating) |
| Relationship Start | 1969 (various sources) |
| Engagement Year | Two son Joaquin Smits; daughter, Taina Smits |
| Marriage Date | June 10, 1980 (most specifically cited; sources range 1979–1981) |
| Divorce Filed | June 22, 1986 (most specifically cited; some sources say 1987) |
| Marriage Duration | Approximately 6–7 years |
| Children | Two son Joaquin Smits; daughter, Taina Smits |
| Grandchildren | Survived by grandchildren at time of death |
| Cause of Death | Pneumonia complications that could not be treated |
| Jimmy’s Career Timing | Divorced before his breakthrough role in L.A. Law (1986 premiere) |
| Jimmy’s Post-Divorce Relationship | Wanda De Jesus actress, began a relationship 1986; still together |
| Barbara’s Post-Divorce Life | Completely private; continued CCE-NYC career |
| Social Media | Wanda De Jesus, actress, began a relationship 1986; still together |
| Net Worth at Death | None had social media accounts |
| Jimmy Smits’ Net Worth | Estimated $11–$15 million |
| Public Profile | Essentially none during her lifetime; biographical coverage emerged post-death |
Ithaca College, 1969, and Two People Who Didn’t Know Where the Story Would Go
Did you know Barbara Smits and Jimmy Smits met at Ithaca College in 1969, years before either of them had any reason to think their relationship would eventually be documented by entertainment biographers? She was a college student. He was a college student. They were not celebrities in any context. They were two young people at a campus in upstate New York with their lives ahead of them.
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They dated for approximately two years before getting engaged in 1971. Then, in what would become a recurring pattern in their relationship, long timelines, deliberate patience, and nothing rushed, they waited approximately nine more years before getting married on June 10, 1980.
Most sources agree on 1980 as the marriage year, though some cite 1979 and some cite 1981. The most specifically documented date is June 10, 1980. By any account, they were together for over a decade before the wedding, which means Barbara Smits had known Jimmy Smits, understood Jimmy Smits, and chosen Jimmy Smits through a long, unhurried sequence of decisions rather than in the flush of early romance.
He was not famous when they married. L.A. Law, the show that would make his face recognizable across America, premiered in September 1986. They filed for divorce in June 1986. The timing is as precise as it is interesting: she left before the breakthrough, or the breakthrough arrived just as she was leaving, depending on how you read the sequence.
Whatever the circumstances, Barbara Smits did not become an actress. She did not leverage her relationship with a rising television star into any kind of public opportunity. She went to New York City, took a job with Cornell Cooperative Extension, and stayed there for twenty-nine years.
Cornell Cooperative Extension and the Career Nobody Covered During Her Lifetime
Cornell Cooperative Extension-New York City is not a glamorous institution. It is a public service organization, a land-grant extension system that connects university research to community needs across New York State. The New York City branch works specifically with urban communities on food access, environmental education, 4-H youth programs, and the kind of practical community development work that functions without press releases or red carpet events.
Barbara Smits arrived there in 1982, one year after she enrolled at Ithaca College. The college connection is not incidental. Cornell and Ithaca have organizational overlap that made the extension system a natural career path for someone educated in that system. She came to New York City initially to work with the 4-H Program.
Did you know the 4-H Program is one of America’s oldest and largest youth development organizations? It originated in rural communities in the early twentieth century and expanded to urban settings. Working with 4-H in New York City in 1982 meant working with young people in neighborhoods that needed exactly what the program offered: structured development, mentorship, and the specific kind of attention that creates capability in young people who might not otherwise receive it. Barbara Smits gave that attention for years.
She moved from 4-H work into the Environmental Issues Program Area, where she served as executive staff assistant, a role that required her to understand both the scientific and administrative dimensions of environmental education at a community level. In 2004, she was appointed assistant to the executive director of CCE-NYC, the top administrative support role in the organization. She held that position until she died in 2010.
Twenty-nine years. Three distinct roles with increasing responsibility. An organization that worked better because she was in it.
When she died, CCE-NYC created the Barbara Smits Service Award in her honor. This is not a ceremonial gesture. Organizations create named awards when someone’s contribution was specific enough, sustained enough, and personal enough to warrant permanent recognition. Her colleagues knew what she had given. They made sure it would be remembered.
Two Children, a Private Life, and the Specific Choice Not to Be Known
Barbara Smits and Jimmy Smits had two children together: a son named Joaquin and a daughter named Taina. Both children’s birth years are widely documented. Barbara’s protective orientation toward privacy extended to her children as well as herself. What is documented is that she raised them through and after her marriage to their father, and that she survived to know her grandchildren before she died in 2010.
After the divorce was finalized sometime in 1986 or 1987, depending on the source, Jimmy Smits began a relationship with actress Wanda De Jesus that continues to this day. Barbara Smits entered a completely different chapter that had nothing to do with any of that. She went back to work at CCE-NYC. She raised her children. She did her job for the next twenty-something years.
Did you know that she and Jimmy Smits shared last names coincidentally by birth? Jimmy Smits was born Jimmy L. Smits. Barbara Smits was born Barbara Smits. They were not related. They happened to share the same surname, and she kept it throughout her marriage and her post-divorce life as her professional identity at CCE-NYC.
That coincidence of names is one of the minor biographical puzzles that makes the internet’s search for information about her complicated. When people search for “Barbara Smits,” they are looking for this woman, but the shared surname creates an odd echo in the documentation.
April 16, 2010: Pneumonia and a Death the World Barely Noticed in Time
Barbara Smits was fifty-four years old when she died on April 16, 2010. The cause was pneumonia, a lung disease whose complications, in her case, proved impossible to treat. She had been diagnosed, and the disease had progressed beyond what medicine could reverse. She died in that specific way that quiet, working people die: surrounded by the people who loved her, without a press release.
She left behind Joaquin and Taina and her grandchildren. She left behind the award that bears her name. She left behind twenty-nine years of service at an organization that worked on behalf of some of New York City’s most underserved communities.
Jimmy Smits, by 2010, had been Emmy Award-winning for years. His roles in L.A. Law, NYPD Blue, and The West Wing had made him one of the most respected dramatic actors on American television. His career was the thing the internet had been documenting for twenty-five years.
Barbara’s life and death were documented much more quietly. The articles that appeared afterward were assembled from fragments: a CCE-NYC memorial, a few details from before the marriage, and the children’s names. The full picture of who she was, twenty-nine years at one organization, a named award, a private family life built entirely on her own terms, only becomes visible when you look at all of it together.
Social Media and Public Image: The Woman Who Left No Digital Trace
Barbara Smits had no social media accounts. This is documented consistently across every source and requires no editorial qualification: she passed away in 2010, before Instagram and Twitter had reached their current scale, and she had never pursued any online presence during the period when such platforms began to develop.
Her public image, assembled entirely after her death, consists of the CCE-NYC memorial and award, her ex-husband’s biographical records, her children’s names, and the biographical aggregation of sites that began covering celebrity-adjacent figures as a content category in the 2010s. None of this documentation captures her daily life, her personality, her relationships with the young people she worked with through 4-H, or the specific institutional contribution that made a named award the appropriate response to her passing.
Her estimated net worth of approximately $1 million reflects twenty-nine years of professional income at a public service organization, whatever divorce settlement was reached in the mid-1980s, and whatever other financial management she undertook across her adult life. It is not a verified figure. It is an aggregate estimate of a private person’s approximate standing.
FAQs
1. Who was Barbara Smits? An American woman who worked for twenty-nine years at Cornell Cooperative Extension-New York City, rising to the role of assistant to the executive director. She was also the first wife of Emmy Award-winning actor Jimmy Smits and the mother of their two children, Joaquin and Taina. She died on April 16, 2010, at fifty-four.
2. When was Barbara Smits born? November 27, 1955.
3. When did Barbara Smits die? April 16, 2010. She was fifty-four years old. The cause was complications from pneumonia.
4. How did Barbara Smits and Jimmy Smits meet? At Ithaca College in New York, where both were students. They met around 1969 and began dating. They were together for approximately eleven years before marrying.
5. When did they get married? The most specifically documented date is June 10, 1980. Some sources cite 1979 or 1981. They had been together for approximately eleven years before the wedding.
6. When did they divorce? The divorce was filed on June 22, 1986, according to the most specifically documented source. Some sources cite 1987 as the finalized divorce year. The marriage lasted approximately six to seven years.
7. Do Barbara Smits and Jimmy Smits share the same last name by birth? Yes. Jimmy Smits was born Jimmy L. Smits, and Barbara was born Barbara Smits. They shared the same last name by coincidence, not by marriage, though she also used the name throughout her married life and afterward.
8. What children did they have? Two: a son named Joaquin Smits and a daughter named Taina Smits. Barbara survived to know her grandchildren before her death.
9. What was Barbara Smits’ career? She spent twenty-nine years at Cornell Cooperative Extension-New York City (CCE-NYC). She began working with the 4-H Program in 1982, advanced to executive staff assistant for the Environmental Issues Program Area, and became assistant to the executive director in 2004.
10. What is The Barbara Smits Service Award? An award established by CCE-NYC in Barbara’s honor to recognize dedication and contributions to the organization’s mission. It reflects the sustained and significant quality of her twenty-nine years of service.