Kim Casali

Kim Casali (9 September 1941 – 15 June 1997) was a New Zealand cartoonist who created the syndicated cartoon feature Love Is..., originally as love notes to her future husband, in the late 1960s.

In one of the first cases of its kind, Casali gave birth to a child sixteen months after the death of her husband, having been artificially inseminated using his stored frozen sperm. The birth split public opinion and although Casali received "hundreds of letters applauding her bravery", some disagreed with her actions, including the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano which wrote that it was "against evangelical morality".

Early career Born Marilyn Judith Grove in Auckland, New Zealand, Casali left home aged nineteen to travel around Australia, Europe and the United States. In 1967 she moved to Los Angeles where she met and began a relationship with Roberto Alfredo Vincenzo Casali, an Italian computer engineer, at a ski-club where they were both taking lessons. Casali had been drawing cartoons of humorous incidents on the ski slopes, which Roberto encouraged, and she soon began adding cartoon illustrations to messages which she left for him.

The very first drawing was created as a "signature" to a note, and represented Casali herself with freckles, large eyes and long fair hair. She said later of these cartoons: "I began making little drawings to express how I felt... It was a little bit like keeping a diary that described how my feelings had grown." The cartoon's release coincided with the wave of success of the novel Love Story (1970) by Erich Segal, and the subsequent movie of the same name starring Ali MacGraw as a girl dying of an incurable disease and Ryan O'Neal as the student who worshiped her. The film's slogan was "Love means never having to say you're sorry." Casali altered it into one of her most famous cartoons: "Love is... being able to say you're sorry."

While the cartoons proved to be very popular and were soon syndicated in the United States and overseas, being published in newspapers in fifty countries world-wide, Roberto's company had closed down and the couple "found themselves living in the US illegally, 'trying to find jobs that would keep us one step ahead of the Immigration Department'".

Bereavement and 'miracle' baby By 1974 the couple had two sons, Stefano and Dario, and planned to have two more children. Asprey has produced the cartoon continuously since 1975.

Roberto opted for surgery at the end of 1975 in order to prolong his life. She said at the time: "Roberto and I were very anxious to provide a brother or sister to our two sons. Now, thanks to the care and patience of the doctors, it has been made possible for me to have another reminder of my wonderful husband."

Later life In the mid-1980s Casali moved the family to New South Wales, Australia, and bought a farm north of Sydney where she bred Arabian horses for several years. In 1990 she returned to England and settled in Leatherhead, Surrey.