Steve Wilkos Details Final Visit With Late Mentor Jerry Springer

Steve Wilkos recalled his last moments with Jerry Springer in a heartbreaking new interview.

The Jerry Spring Show bodyguard, 59, sat down with ET Online and detailed his last visit with the television show host, which he now realizes was Springer's way of saying "goodbye."

Wilkos revealed that Springer had called him one afternoon about getting together for cigars. He noted that he initially didn't feel like going as he was tired from taping his show, The Steve Wilkos Show, but he pulled himself together to visit the man who had changed his life.

"I really didn't want to go, but it's Jerry, and I'm like, 'I want to see the guy, and I love him,'" Wilkos recalled. "He never told me he was ill. And now, I think that night I saw him was his way of saying goodbye to me without saying goodbye. I wish I would have known. I think in his way, he was telling me goodbye."

"He embraced me. He hugged me like he had never done before, and he was telling me he loves me," Wilkos divulged to the outlet. "We sat down, and I think back now, we were reflecting a lot on the good times that we had, which we normally didn't do a lot, but this time it was a lot of reflection on the good times that we had together."

"And I was telling my wife, for me, it makes a lot of sense today," he added. "I'm hearing that he had pancreatic cancer, but he did not say anything to me. So, I'm really not sure. But if it's true, then he definitely said goodbye to me in a way that he was letting me know that that was the end."

As Parade previously reported, Springer passed away on the morning of April 27 at his home in Chicago, Illinois. His longtime friend, Jean Galvin, confirmed he died after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

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